Staying focused for long periods of time is difficult, and despite what you may have heard, there’s no easy way to change that. What you can do, however, is make it easier to focus when you need to by taking breaks when it is best for you.


By taking breaks at specific intervals, you can keep yourself refreshed and ready to focus when you need. That’s where timers come in.

What breaks you take and what works best for you will vary from person to person, but luckily, there are plenty of options of timers to manage these breaks. Here are five of the best.






If you’re at all familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, then the name of this first website should make a lot of sense to you. If you’re not familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, there’s no need to stress.

Despite its name, the technique is really quite simple. Pomodoro works by setting a timer for a series of different intervals.

Periods of focus are 25 minutes long, and end in a five-minute break. Once you’ve done this four times, you take a longer break to refresh yourself. Typically, this break is 20 minutes long.


Related: What Is the Pomodoro Method? How to Increase Your Productivity With It

If this sounds a little confusing to manage yourself, don’t worry. Pomodor handles all the timing elements for you. The web page is clean and simple to understand.


When you’re ready to start working, just press play and forget. Pomodor will begin to count down each of your sets, and with just a glance, you’ll be able to see just how long you have before the next break is.

There are plenty of useful options here. You can adjust just how long or short you want each period of focus and each break to be, and you can enable a dark mod if the light mode is a little too much on your eyes.

What’s really cool, though, is that Pomodor tracks how you use it. After a couple of sessions using the Pomodor timer, you’ll be able to see different stats about how you worked and for how long based on your usage.






If you like the idea of giving yourself a specific time limit to try and get things done, but don’t like the specific structures behind Pomodor, then Custom Interval Timer is another phenomenal solution.

Now, the initial intention behind this timer seems to be for use with high-intensity interval training workouts. As a result, the duration of each section is calculated in seconds, which isn’t always ideal. Consider using a calculator to get the lengths you want.

Related: The Best Online Scientific Calculators

Regardless, this is an incredible tool for creating a timer specific to your exact needs. If you like the idea of the Pomodoro Technique but would rather shorter segments, then you can easily make that happen using this tool.


The possibilities are endless, and you can adjust more than just the length of each section. You can give each interval a name so that you know what you’re meant to be doing, and even color-code each section to make it easier to identify at a glance.


Once you’ve created your timer, you can bookmark the page to keep it safe, and even send the link to others if you think that your timer is worth sharing.




Next up on this list is Timerdoro. As you might have guessed, this timer web service has also taken inspiration from the Pomodoro Method, but with a unique twist.

Timerdoro is all about setting up multiple complex timers which you can run simultaneously. Let’s say, for example, that you want to do a project for four hours using the Pomodoro Technique.


With Timerdoro you can set up an automatically restarting Pomodoro timer, and then set a four hour long timer to tell you when to stop working. You can assign each a different timer sound to make them more distinct as well.

Using Timerdoro like this is just scratching the surface of what it’s capable of. Let’s say you need to remind yourself to look away from the screen periodically for eye strain, or to stand up from your desk every hour for your health.


Timerdoro can run both of these timers alongside a Pomodoro timer simultaneously, each with a different color accent, each with a unique notification sound.

If you’re looking to run multiple timers simultaneously, Timerdoro is the best option for you to choose.




If you’ve ever worked in an agile or DevOp work environment, or are just serious about your productivity, then you’re likely already familiar with Kanban.

If not, the premise is simple. Kanban is a framework that represents work items visually on a Kanban Board. Allowing you to see the state of every piece of your work at any given time.


Related: How to Manage Your Tasks Using the Japanese Kanban Technique

KanbanFlow is, at its core, a Kanban Board which you can use to create and organize the tasks which you need to get done on the deadlines that you are given.


Where KanbanFlow is a little different, however, is that it also integrates in-built timers which you can attach to each task. This gives you all the benefits of a Kanban Board while still working on a Pomodoro or your own custom schedule.

As you work with the timer running, you can select each task from your Kanban Board. Doing so will have KanbanFlow track how long you were working on each task.




Finally, we have Pomofocus. Pomofocus is a Pomodoro timer which is available entirely online and for free. You can even download desktop copies if you'd prefer not to run the timer through your browser.

Pomofocus works about how you would expect from a Pomodoro timer, though it does have a number of cool features that make it worth using.

Pomofocus keeps track of your tasks as you use it day after day, so you can track your productivity, which supplements its ability to record tasks that you’re doing as you do them.



The site also features color transitions for the different stages of focus and of rest, and includes audio notifications to make sure that you remain on track.



Hopefully, this list of productivity timers has helped you think of your productivity differently. Focusing doesn’t have to be as difficult as it can sometimes appear, and productivity timers can help to alter how you think of your work.

They are, however, just one tool. Like how a hammer is no use against a screw, productivity timers are just one of the many options you have available to you. They are good for some jobs, but not others.









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About The Author




Jack Ryan
(63 Articles Published)







Jack is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia with a passion for all things tech and all things written. When not writing, Jack enjoys reading, playing video games, and spending time with friends.




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