25/5, 50/10 or 52/17: how long to focus before taking a break

Almost every focus method says the same thing: work in blocks, rest between them. Where they disagree is the length. Three rhythms come up most, and each has a different origin and a different kind of work it suits.

The three rhythms side by side

Rhythm	Focus	Break	Long break	One cycle	Where it comes from
Pomodoro	25 min	5 min	15–30 min after four	30 min	Francesco Cirillo, late 1980s
50/10	50 min	10 min	Often 30 min after two or three	60 min	A longer Pomodoro, fitted to the hour
52/17	52 min	17 min	None built in	69 min	DeskTime’s 2014 analysis of its users

25/5: the Pomodoro Technique

Twenty-five minutes of work on one task, then five minutes off, with a long break after four. It is the best place to start because 25 minutes is short enough to begin even when you do not want to, and frequent breaks keep the last block of the morning as sharp as the first. The full method has a few rules beyond the timings; what the Pomodoro Technique is covers them.

Suits: studying, admin, email, anything you have been putting off, days with lots of small tasks, and anyone whose attention drifts after twenty minutes or so.

Struggles with: work that takes ten minutes to get into. Writing, programming and design can lose a fair share of each pomodoro to warming up.

50/10: an hour at a time

Fifty minutes of focus, ten minutes of rest. Each cycle is exactly an hour, so if you start on the hour every break lands at ten to, and meetings fit around it with no arithmetic.

Suits: deep work that needs time to settle into, and people who already work comfortably in long stretches.

Struggles with: tired afternoons. Fifty minutes can become twenty minutes of work and thirty of drifting. When that starts, drop back to 25/5.

The 50/10 timer runs two cycles and then a 30-minute break.

52/17: from one app’s data

In 2014 the time-tracking app DeskTime looked at how its most productive 10% of users spent their day. On average, they worked for 52 minutes and then took a 17-minute break, and they actually left their work during the break.

Two cautions. It describes the habits of people using one app, not the result of a controlled experiment, so it shows what some productive people did rather than what is best. And 17 minutes is a long break: roughly a quarter of every cycle is rest.

Suits: people who like fewer, fuller breaks, time to walk, eat or talk to someone, and work that runs well in hour-long blocks.

The 52/17 timer runs three cycles, about three and a half hours.

How to find your own rhythm

1. Start with 25/5 for a week. It is the easiest to stick to and gives you something to compare against.
2. Notice where the bell interrupts you. If it keeps catching you just as you got going, try 50/10. If you are drifting well before it rings, try 20/5.
3. Match the rhythm to the task, not the day. Many people use 50/10 for writing in the morning and 25/5 for admin in the afternoon.
4. Keep the breaks honest. Whatever the length, a break spent scrolling is not rest. Stand up and look away from the screen.

Studying for exams

For revision, 25/5 is a reliable default. A set of four pomodoros with breaks takes just over two hours, a realistic single session. Give each pomodoro a specific job, such as a set of past-paper questions, rather than “revise chapter 4”. The Pomodoro study timer has presets for 25/5, 50/10 and shorter sessions.

Running any of them

The Pomodoro timer has presets for all three rhythms, and every length can be changed in minutes. It moves into each break and back to work with a bell. It also counts the focus sessions you finish today, and keeps that count in your browser only.