What to Do on a Pomodoro Break

Spend the break on something that doesn’t look like work: get up and step away from the desk, look into the distance, drink some water, stretch. A phone feed is the same screen and the same attention, which is why you come back from it more tired.

The bell rings, it’s a break. Your hand reaches for the phone on its own: a feed, a couple of messages, one email. Five minutes later you’re back at work — and somehow more tired than before. There was a break, but no rest.

Why you shouldn’t “save” a break is covered in part two; this part is about how to spend it.

Short break: 3–10 minutes

You can’t do much in five minutes, and you don’t need to. One or two of these is enough:

stand up and walk away from the desk — at least to the window or the kitchen;
look into the distance — out the window, down the hallway;
get some water and drink it away from the screen;
stretch — shoulders, neck, back, a couple of squats;
do nothing — that counts too, as long as there’s no screen.

For your eyes there’s the 20-20-20 rule: every twenty minutes, spend twenty seconds looking at something twenty feet (about six metres) away. The American Academy of Ophthalmology, among others, recommends it as a simple way to give your eyes a rest from the screen. The Academy also notes that long hours at a screen tire your eyes but don’t cause permanent damage.

Within a pomodoro the rule almost takes care of itself: every twenty-five minutes you look into the distance not for twenty seconds but for several minutes — as long as the break is screen-free. To get closer to “every twenty”, glance at the window for a few seconds mid-pomodoro: that doesn’t break it.

What doesn’t rest you

Feeds, email, messengers. Your eyes stay on the same screen you work on, and your head picks up new tasks from other people.

There’s a direct test with phones. In an experiment by Sanghoon Kang and Terri Kurtzberg (2019), 414 people solved anagrams and took a break halfway through: with a phone, with a computer, with paper, or no break at all. After a phone break they solved more slowly and less well than after the other kinds of break — and no better than those who took no break at all. It’s one study on puzzles, so treat it as a hint, not a law.

Email has another catch. In two experiments, Sophie Leroy (2009) showed that people struggle to pull their attention away from an unfinished task, and the next task suffers; she called it attention residue. Her study says nothing about email or breaks — what follows is my conclusion, not hers: an email read a minute before the bell easily becomes that kind of unfinished task, and you’ll enter the next pomodoro still thinking about it.

Long break: 15–30 minutes

After a cycle of four pomodoros comes the long break. It’s time for things that don’t fit into five minutes:

go outside — even just to the corner and back;
eat somewhere other than your desk;
talk to someone about something other than work;
walk without headphones — or at least not with a work call in them.

Longer rhythms have their own rules: 50/10 has a twenty-minute long break after three pomodoros, while 52/17 and 90/20 have none — every break there is already long. More in part five.

What the research says

In 2022, a team led by Patricia Albulescu published a meta-analysis in PLOS ONE on micro-breaks — pauses of ten minutes or less. It covered 22 samples and more than 2,300 people. The conclusions are honest and modest:

vigor goes up and fatigue goes down — statistically significant, but small effects;
for performance overall there was no significant effect. It showed up only on tasks with low cognitive demands, not on demanding ones;
the longer the break, the better for performance. The authors note that after draining mental work, ten minutes may not be enough.

Bottom line: a short break reliably helps you feel better, but it doesn’t promise “forty percent more output”. And after a hard mental cycle, a long break isn’t a luxury.

How to come back

Pick the next task before the break ends — then the bell finds you ready, not staring at a to-do list.
Don’t “make up” for a break with work. A skipped break doesn’t come back; start the next pomodoro at your usual rhythm.
Break ran long? Start a new pomodoro. Don’t try to finish the old one in the minutes left: a pomodoro is indivisible, and half a pomodoro gives you nothing.

If breaks don’t happen

Let the break start on its own. If you decide at every bell whether to stop, “just one more minute” usually wins.
Keep the timer in sight — in the menu bar or as a widget: a break you can see running is harder to swallow.
Agree with colleagues that you reply during breaks, not during pomodoros. Then a break doesn’t turn into inbox triage and a pomodoro doesn’t turn into waiting. More in part three.

In the app

By default in Pomodoro the short break is five minutes and the long one is fifteen after four pomodoros; Gentle Start has three and ten, Deep Focus ten and twenty after three. You can change any duration in settings, from 1 to 180 minutes.

Start breaks automatically is on out of the box and Start focus sessions automatically is off: the break starts by itself, and you get back to work by pressing Start. The end of each session comes with a sound and a notification with a Start button.

For the first twelve pomodoros you’ll see tips on breaks. On a short one: “Break time. Stand up, stretch, look out the window — better not to check mail or feeds.” On a long one: “A cycle is done — take a longer break. A walk or a snack helps your head recover.” And afterwards: “Break’s over. Pick the next task and press Start.” After that the tips go away.

If you have Focus mode turn on for pomodoros, it turns off on the break, so notifications that piled up during the pomodoro arrive right then. Skip (⌘K) on a break ends it, and the pomodoro waits for Start; after a long break the cycle starts over.

The app has no exercises, no separate 20-20-20 reminder and no screen lock for breaks: what you do in those minutes is up to you.

This is the last part of the series: the pomodoro and the break together close the loop. If you landed here first, start from the beginning: the Pomodoro Technique: how to start. And to fit pomodoros and breaks into a working day, see time blocking and Pomodoro.