[HN Gopher] Pomodoro Timer
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Pomodoro Timer
Author : nitinreddy88
Score : 126 points
Date : 2023-01-22 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pomofocus.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (pomofocus.io)
| etna_ramequin wrote:
| Thanks for posting! This app has definitely helped me complete
| many essays!
| seydor wrote:
| Posted this a few weeks ago, if you want to pomodoro with friends
| we have this (formerly pomochat): https://remoteyo.com
| f_allwein wrote:
| From my experience, the key feature for a pomodoro timer is that
| breaks should start automatically, whereas the next pomodoro
| should not. This way, even if you took a 6 minute break, you can
| have the full pomodoro. Plus, I prefer starting the focused work
| with a deliberate action (click).
|
| Quite a lot of timers I tried, however, cannot do that. Great
| that this is possible here (settings)!
| wpietri wrote:
| Why should either one start automatically? The one I'm using is
| manual in both cases, and that seems fine to me. Sometimes if
| I'm in the middle of something I go longer. That's good by me,
| as for me pomodoros are more about overcoming resistance to
| starting/continuing.
| f_allwein wrote:
| true, that is a good point. I should give it a try =)
| jh00ker wrote:
| I'm spending my pomodoro break on HN right now! I use the Focus
| To Do app on my Mac and Android phone. It's a combo to-do list
| app and pomodoro app. The mobile and desktop apps sync.
|
| The feature I like most is creating recurring tasks on diff
| schedules. When you mark the task done, it creates a new task
| with a due date set on the task's schedule. Examples: Change
| toothbrush head - 3 months
|
| I also like crossing stuff off the list on the mobile app.
|
| It has whitenoise for when the pomodoro timer is going! Leet Code
| - 1 month Smoke Detector Batteries - 6 months
| nmca wrote:
| Some folks seem to think the benefit of pomos is the focus time.
| When I used them, it was the breaks. Stopping every twenty five
| minutes and asking "is this the right thing to be doing now" was
| invaluable.
| axpy906 wrote:
| I agree. I have no problem focusing on something until my
| vision blurs. Pomodoro has helped me take breaks and reduce eye
| strain.
| quitit wrote:
| Stopping exactly when it says is key for me, it's easier to go
| back to something that is in progress rather than returning to
| something that isn't already in my mind.
|
| I also prefer a physical timer, there is something nice about
| it being a separate tangible item that's not a window on the
| very work space that I'm using.
| jlynn wrote:
| For me, it has been easier to have uninterrupted focus time
| when I know that "in X minutes, I can address that
| notification." Without the preset breaks, a notification begged
| to be looked at because when else might it get addressed?
| Decabytes wrote:
| I use the free Powerpom app on the Windows Store. One of the key
| things for me when using a Pomodoro timer is... If I say I'm
| working on something for an hour, than anytime I get distracted,
| go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, I stop it.
|
| If an "hour" of work actually takes me an hour to complete as
| opposed to an hour and 15 of real time, than it's a good day.
| mr_kotan wrote:
| There is a good global pomodoro timer for working and chating
| with others. Every 30 minutes a global pomodoro starts. The
| design is also clean and minimalist. https://pomodorr.io
| RomanZharenkov wrote:
| looks nice too. Did you consider adding video-chat for
| participants?
| emmy_di wrote:
| [dead]
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Good! Some newfound friends and I made one of these a long time
| ago for the Odin Project. I prefer our circular length bar. Ours
| also has a lot more bugs than yours. =D
|
| https://businesstech.dev/pomodoro/
| coreyw56 wrote:
| I'm a fan of the pomodoro method, although always found 25 minute
| cycle to be too short to actually concentrate. Personally like
| the 40 minute - 10 minute cycle more.
| chapium wrote:
| Does Pomodoro give anyone else a lot of anxiety while they are
| using it?
| ravix wrote:
| Timers miss two key features: visualization of time and
| customizability. https://timeva.app was built to address both
| issues.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I use this daily even as I myself am making my own Pomodoro style
| app, it's a case of me procrastinating shipping my product so I
| tearfully use someone else's instead in the meantime (there's a
| good blog post about this by Kitze, with HN discussion [0]). My
| product [1] basically solves a lot of the issues I have with
| regular pomodoro timers, such as that the work and break times
| are rigid between tasks and you can't add or subtract time; that
| you can't export the times as a PDF or CSV to send to clients if
| you're freelancing and billing by the hour; that you can't
| organize tasks in a calendar-like format, et cetera.
|
| But until I build that, I'll have to continue using Pomofocus. It
| has a great free plan, I wonder how much money the founder makes
| from a B2C product.
|
| Also, something I learned recently was that _Pomodoro_ is
| trademarked, which is why you see most timers riffing on the name
| otherwise calling it something else.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31352108
|
| [1] https://getartemis.app
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| I am a fan of physical hour glasses and have a little collection
| from a 3min egg timer up to 1.5hrs to do sprint blocks. Been
| doing that since before I had heard of Pomodoro outside of
| Italian food. Call me old school but I like the intersection of
| Skeuomorphic and Tangible user Interfaces and if there was an
| hourglass with a Bluetooth link into my App world you can bet I'd
| jump on it.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Biggest problem here that it's in a browser. One tab next to it
| is this orange time trap website.
| popcalc wrote:
| Read the title as Pomodoro tinder. That would be an interesting
| concept.
| gombosg wrote:
| Maybe this is a good time to ask. Have you found Pomodoro to be
| good for coding?
|
| When I get into the flow I completely lose track of time, and
| find the 5 minutes interruption every 25 minutes annoying. And
| then, during the break, I either can't get my thoughts off the
| problem at hand, or I do and then it's more effort to get back to
| the task.
|
| I'm curious about your experience.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I give myself full permission to skip the timer when I'm in the
| zone. Pomodoro is brilliant for me when I'm not personally
| motivated to get a thing done, like chores or other things that
| have to be done but that I'm not excited about.
| epistemer wrote:
| [dead]
| adrium wrote:
| Really nice work!
|
| After trying many different ones, I created my own.
|
| I use it for HIIT and Pomodoro:
| https://tools.adrium.dev/timer.html
|
| Features: Landscape/portrait layouts, configurable intervals,
| sound, color, circular progress bar, simple UI, spacebar to
| start/pause.
|
| It is pure HTML5, one file, and thereby open source.
| tibanne wrote:
| Nice app.
| radarsat1 wrote:
| If anyone like me has read the comments here and the linked page
| and still has no idea what this has to do with tomatoes..
|
| Apparently it is a method of dividing a work day into explicitly
| timed intervals:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
| anonymous344 wrote:
| this looks nice! I used one alternative, but somehow lost it when
| it was too locked
| callmerk wrote:
| I have tried your app & i loved it
| hooverd wrote:
| Personally, I prefer the Tomato Technique.
| subtra3t wrote:
| I know that some people swear by Pomodoro, but personally when I
| get in the "zone" for doing something, I find that taking a
| break, however small it may be, ruins my focus.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I find the main benefit is to actually start working on jobs
| that are necessary but unpleasant. For this I do a 15 mins work
| / 5 mins break. I tell myself "only 15 minutes, then a break".
| Then I can actually convince myself to start the unpleasant
| task, as I know I have an "out". It's a bit of a mind hack.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| I'm the same, I'll start coding and I'll stop for a second and
| it's been hours.
|
| If I am finding it hard to focus then taking small short breaks
| helps me a lot
| zippytyro wrote:
| I remember I tried this long ago. Would be great with a chrome
| extension
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I swear, my bad eyesight saw 'pornofocus.io'
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Same here. Likewise pom.xml in Java gets me every time
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I have tried quite a few Pomodoro app and they are all good.
| Remember, it is OK to find your own time-break cycle and not
| stick to the standard Pomodoro. I'm more comfortable with a 50-10
| cycle (50-min, then 10 for break). I don't care about the
| Pomodoro count or how many per day.
|
| If you are working at home, I found that cheap mechanical kitchen
| timers are great. These days, I'm experimenting with an oversize
| hourglass. It makes no noise and no indication that it ended.
| However, the beauty I found is that if I didn't see the sand all
| over from the upper section, then I might been in a zone. When my
| mind gets back to distraction or normalize and see that the sand
| is over, I just walk around, have tea and get back to the next.
|
| My personal experience and thoughts.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| When I turn over the hourglass my mantra is "this hour shall
| pass". A reminder to myself that I have this time to work;
| sometimes I dread the work ahead, and am reminded that the work
| will eventually pass, and sometimes I cherish the work ahead,
| and am reminded that my time to enjoy it shall pass.
|
| I like that the hourglass cannot be reset, you turn it and sand
| flows, the sand cannot be reset with the push of a button. The
| hour passes whether you get distracted or not, no starting
| over.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I do 50-10 as well. I do, however, count my pomodors.
| ericpauley wrote:
| I really like this idea. It does seem odd to stop working if
| you're in the zone just because some timer went off. Better for
| the timer to be a minimum, rather than a hard maximum.
| maccard wrote:
| It depends on what you want to achieve. If you just want to
| hit focus then setting a 15 minute timer and ignoring it will
| likely do it. I find significant value in the breaks - I use
| them to take a walk/grab coffee for my desk, and feel that
| those regular little breaks are enough that I can keep the
| pace for an entire day, day on day.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| "The best way is always to stop when you are going good and
| when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day
| when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is
| the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember
| it."
|
| -- Ernest Hemingway
| latexr wrote:
| > I found that cheap mechanical kitchen timers are great.
|
| That's the original method[1]:
|
| > Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word
| for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used
| as a university student.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
| sahaskatta wrote:
| This is built into the latest version of Windows 11 natively:
| https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-...
| raybb wrote:
| Wow this is great timing. I've started doing pomodoro more and
| was looking for a decent app to use. I settled on
| https://github.com/ivoronin/TomatoBar for Mac since it's simple
| and open source. It doesn't have the option to show how many you
| did in a day which I would like so I'll give the one you shared a
| try.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'll likely get judged for this, but I'm using a paid proprietary
| Windows Application (w/browser extensions) called "Cold Turkey"
| (no association, just a customer). It has Pomodoro Timers, but
| they're enforced, meaning you can blacklist out certain
| applications or websites during your "work" blocks and allow them
| during your free time. I'm doing 20/20 during the work-day, with
| an hour off for lunch.
|
| I'll say this about that specific application: You can tell
| whoever created it, created it for themselves. What I mean by
| that is that they really gave a lot of thought into how people
| may try and disable or bypass it. For example there're different
| ways to lock your own rules, to stop you trying to remove your
| favorite website during the middle of a work-day.
|
| As I said I'll get judged, but truthfully a lot of bad habits can
| use a helping hand to break. People just don't take social media
| (Reddit, HN, YouTube, et al) seriously as a potentially addictive
| habit.
|
| PS - I won't link it since this already reads like an advert. It
| costs $40, the free version I don't consider useful and doesn't
| support Pomodoro Timers. Their privacy policy is legit, and the
| software outside of updates is offline.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Why would anyone judge you? I used to use CT as well, over time
| I realized I needed it less and less so its job was done for
| me, nevertheless it trained my focus well. The founder is great
| too, I accidentally bought an extra copy back around ten years
| ago and the founder reimbursed me nearly immediately after I
| caught the error and emailed them.
| TwentyPosts wrote:
| Having used Cold Turkey before, I can confirm that it's really
| good at doing what it set out to do (though I have a few
| annoyances with it, since there are a few things it doesn't
| allow me to do). What's impressive about it is that it is quite
| difficult to bypass it, and all of the naive approaches just
| won't work (eg. uninstalling it or switching to a different
| account).
|
| I wish there were a Linux equivalent of it, but nowadays I
| don't need it as much as before anyway--I'm not sure if that's
| complacency, or if I just got better at focusing.
| szastamasta wrote:
| I've set up a PI Hole at work with blocklist of social media,
| YT and similar sites exactly for that. Whenever I want to check
| any of them I need to go to PI Hole admin site, log in and
| disable blocking. Having to do that is in 90% cases enough to
| stop me from procrastinating. When I really need it for work,
| these few more steps don't make a difference.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| A similar Mac version of this is HeyFocus -
| https://heyfocus.com It is paid but it really gets the job
| done. I don't really use it these days (kinda built up the
| habit). I remember setting the quotes to just one phrase --
| "Get the F*K back to Work" or something like that or was it
| like "You ought to be Working" (as seen in the ceiling of Kevin
| Bacon in Hollow Man.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Doesn't apple have screen time for this purpose?
| cfu28 wrote:
| Cold Turkey also works on Mac FYI
| kibwen wrote:
| Note that HN has a small amount of procrastination-blocking
| built-in. It's the "noprocrast" setting in your user profile.
|
| _" If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site
| for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in
| between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view
| the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back
| in for 3 hours."_
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I've used that before, and it is useful. The thing I didn't
| love is that it makes no distinction between my free time and
| work time. Meaning on the evenings or weekends, I'd have the
| same restrictions as my 9-5 Monday-Friday.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I've used it for a few years, great app!
|
| Will link it instead. :)
|
| https://getcoldturkey.com/
| necessary wrote:
| Nice work! This is very visually pleasing and I think the
| addition of light task management w/ optional estimates is great!
|
| In general though, does anyone else feel like using a pomodoro
| timer ruins any chance at intense focus during the workday? I
| don't doubt the effectiveness for others, but personally, it
| feels like taking frequent breaks from work lowers my overall
| productivity because I'm leaving and entering focus so often.
| This is also the reason I don't like taking walks in the middle
| of the workday, unless I'm working on a problem that needs more
| thought than action. The days that I stay in-focus for the full
| work day are usually my happiest and most productive.
| corderop wrote:
| From my experience, it's useful when I'm not able to
| concentrate on a specific task. The feeling of blocking time
| for a specific task is helpful for my mind to fully focus n
| that.
|
| Anyway, 25 minutes is just the standard but you can use longer
| periods. For example, I use blocks os 1 hour where I block all
| my distractions, knowing that this time is just for that
| specific duty.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| It's hard to stay in-focus for 8 hours without amphetamines. I
| find that I have to eat and pee and stretch now and again.
|
| But I've had trouble with 25 minutes being a bit too short for
| some more technical tasks. Is there any literature about
| optimal work durations for highly abstract tasks? Programming
| architecture, super complicated mechanical cad, some physics or
| math calculations...
|
| It takes a long time to load the model into your working
| memory, so restarting a lot is very painful. Is it better to
| actually follow the pomodoro model and do 25/5? Or is 50/5 more
| productive? Maybe 50/10 or 40/5? A few professions get the
| autonomy to control their work at that level of granularity,
| and we'd love more guidance than "do what works best for you,
| bb."
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| > does anyone else feel like using a pomodoro timer ruins any
| chance at intense focus during the workday
|
| You don't have to use it for projects where you're naturally in
| flow and can maintain intense focus without productivity tools.
|
| The Pomodoro Technique is for those who /get out of flow/
| easily and can't be productive without taking breaks often.
|
| I've used it, and it was for tasks where I was able to hold the
| state of a program's structure even when AFK for ten minutes.
| I've noticed lethargy and fatigue sets in every 10 minutes,
| since I'm usually chaired and my wrists have mild RSI which
| needs to be repaired via breaks.
|
| There is a law of diminishing returns the longer you are
| stationed at a desk doing focused work. Your boss might not
| like all your breaks, but you can calmly explain 'It's
| science!' to them.
| stephenl wrote:
| I prefer The Flow App for the Mac/iOS, for its the simplicity
| (yet just enough features) and lite on resources.
| https://flowapp.info Great customer support as well.
| axpy906 wrote:
| Tried it. Switched back to ToMighty. Too many bells and
| whistles.
| Bloating wrote:
| As I understand your comment, simple is a key feature for Mac
| users
| humnera wrote:
| Creating your own Pomodoro timer is a fun programming exercise.
| Here's one written with just one Java file:
| https://github.com/bnuredini/jodoro/blob/e62571b5173a63262b0....
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(page generated 2023-01-22 23:01 UTC)