25 Minute Focus Timer
Twenty-five minutes of one thing, with a sound at zero.
Runs entirely in your browser
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Twenty-five minutes on one thing. Press Start, work until it rings, then take five.
The length comes from a time-management method Francesco Cirillo worked out as a student in the late 1980s, and the rule that does the work is not the length: it is that an interrupted block does not count. You either finish the twenty-five minutes or you start over. That is what turns a vague intention to concentrate into something with a pass and a fail, and it is the part people drop when they copy the timer and leave the method behind.
The full cycle is twenty-five minutes of work, five of break, and a longer break of fifteen to thirty after every fourth. Cirillo has said the number itself is arbitrary; what matters is that it is short enough to start without dread and long enough to get somewhere.
For the break, the five minute timer is the other half of the cycle. Any other length is a matter of typing it into the boxes.
How to use it
- Press Start, or the space bar, and the countdown begins.
- Leave the tab open. It keeps time whether or not you are looking at it.
- Change the minutes and seconds in the boxes for any other length.
Questions
Why twenty-five minutes?
Because Cirillo settled on it, not because anything measures out at twenty-five. He has said as much: the length has to be short enough to begin without resistance and long enough to reach something, and the exact figure matters far less than keeping it unbroken. Twenty and thirty work as well; the boxes above take either.
What happens if I get interrupted?
In the method as written, the block is void and you start it again. That sounds severe and is the entire mechanism: it makes protecting the block the goal rather than an intention, and it turns every interruption into something you notice rather than absorb.
How long should the break be?
Five minutes after each block, and fifteen to thirty after the fourth. The short break is meant to be genuinely away from the work, which is why a timer helps there too: five minutes of something else expands very easily into twenty.
Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs?
Yes. The count comes from the clock rather than from a tick that a background tab would slow down, so it is right when you come back however long you were away. Closing the tab does end it, since nothing is stored anywhere.
Will it make a sound when it finishes?
It rings at zero. Browsers block sound until a page has been interacted with, and pressing Start counts, so a timer you started will always be able to ring. Check the tab is not muted if you hear nothing.
Is anything sent anywhere?
No. The timer is arithmetic on your own clock, running in this tab, and the page makes no request of its own. It works with the network off and keeps no record of what you timed.
Other lengths
The same timer on a different duration. Any of them takes a length of your own once you are there.
Your data stays on your device
Everything above runs inside your browser as WebAssembly compiled from Rust. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or stored on a server. You can load this page once, go offline, and it still works.
This page makes no requests at all, to anywhere. That is not a promise in the copy: it is a Content-Security-Policy header your browser enforces, and connect-src on it is none. Open the network tab and watch nothing happen.