Work you keep putting off
Set 10 to 15 minutes to lower the barrier to starting. Once you have momentum, lengthen the following sessions.
FOCUS CYCLE GUIDE
Fitting a 25-minute focus cycle to your day
A focus cycle replaces "hold out as long as you can" with a clear split between working and resting. The default is 25 minutes of focus and a 5 minute break, but it only lasts if you tune it to the work and to your own energy.
01
Start with the plain structure
Begin with four rounds of 25 minutes of focus and a 5 minute break, then rest for about 15 minutes. Pick exactly one task for the focus block. During the break, get out of the chair or look at something far away rather than starting the next task early.
25 min focus→5 min break× 415 min long break
Not finishing a session is not a failure. Note what interrupted you in a few words and start again — that note is what tells you how to adjust the next session.
02
Change the length to match the work
Writing and development
35 to 50 minutes of focus with an 8 to 10 minute break often fits better. If alerts keep cutting your train of thought, lengthen the focus block rather than shortening it.
Review and admin work
20 to 25 minutes with a 5 minute break keeps fatigue from accumulating. Setting a small scope per session also makes progress easy to see.
03
Setting it up in PipTim
- Choose "Focus Cycle" at the top
The default focus duration appears straight away.
- Adjust the durations in settings
Enter the focus time, short break, long break, and how many rounds pass before the long break.
- Watch the remaining time in the PiP window
Even after you switch to another application, the small window shows whether you are in a focus block or a break.
04
When to turn automatic start on, and when not to
With start the next session automatically switched on in settings, a break begins the moment focus ends and the next focus block begins the moment the break does. You stop pressing buttons — and you also lose the natural place to stop.
Turn it on when
The work is already decided and needs no judgement between sessions. Problem sets, filing, review — anything you can simply continue in the next block.
Turn it off when
Each session needs a decision about what to do. For writing or design, rolling straight into the next block means starting it unprepared.
If breaks keep stretching
Leave it on. When nothing happens at the end of a break there is nothing calling you back. Automatic start supplies that cue for you.
05
Three ways the cycle falls apart
- Skipping the break.
The most common and the most damaging. Waving a break through because things are going well costs you two or three sessions later, when focus drops off a cliff. What makes this method work is not the focus time but the fact that breaks are compulsory. Four sessions run together without them are just a two-hour block.
- Missing the signal.
You overrun a session by twenty minutes, or stretch a break to thirty, because you never noticed it end. A completion sound is silent in a muted tab, and a screen behind another window may as well not exist. The PiP window closes both gaps.
- Starting too long.
Setting fifty or ninety minutes on an ambitious day rarely survives three days. Start at the shortest length you will actually keep and grow from there. If twenty-five feels heavy, begin with fifteen.
06
Start without configuring anything
The common arrangements have their own addresses. They open with the numbers already filled in, so there is no settings dialog to work through.
- Pomodoro 25/525 minutes of focus, a 5 minute break, and a 15 minute long break after the fourth round. The standard arrangement.
- Focus 50/1050 minutes of focus, a 10 minute break, and a 20 minute long break after the third round. For work that takes a while to get into.
Change a value on either page and a button appears to put it back, so you can experiment and return to the original arrangement in one click. To get a team onto the same numbers, send them the address from Copy settings link.