PIPTIM · ALWAYS ON TOP
50/10 Focus Cycle
50 minutes of focus, a 10 minute break, and a 20 minute long break after the third round.
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PIPTIM · ALWAYS ON TOP
50 minutes of focus, a 10 minute break, and a 20 minute long break after the third round.
Tap the time to change it
Some work does not fit into 25 minutes. Getting oriented in a codebase, reading a paper, or structuring a long piece of writing often takes fifteen minutes just to get in. For that kind of work, a 25-minute session ends about when it was starting to be useful.
50/10 is close to the shortest block that absorbs the cost of getting started. The break has to grow with it: after fifty dense minutes, a five-minute break is a pause rather than a recovery.
If the cycle feels too long, go back to the standard 25/5, or set your own focus and break lengths in settings.
On days when starting is hard, or for work made of many small units, use 25/5. For work you do not want to leave once you are in it, use 50/10. Switching within a day is fine: 50/10 in the morning, 25/5 when the afternoon sags. The study session length article sets out the criteria.
Distance from the screen, mostly. Drink water, look out of a window, walk. Spending the break on a phone rests neither the eyes nor the attention, and the next 50 minutes feel heavier for it.
Three 50 minute sessions is already two and a half hours. A short break no longer restores much at that point, so the default steps up to 20 minutes. It can be changed in settings.