With the "Pomodoro technique," you divide whatever you're doing into "intervals of 25 minutes, with five-minute breaks in between — 25 minutes on, five minutes off, over and over again."

"A pomodoro, once started, must not be interrupted, otherwise it has to be abandoned. But in this stringency, there is relief: You are not allowed to extend a pomodoro, either. After a set of four 25-minute intervals are completed, you’re supposed to take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes before continuing.... We waste hours keeping on going when our concentration’s long gone, caught in drowsy, drawn-out moments staring glumly at a screen, and not only when we’re supposed to be doing our jobs. Leisure time has also taken on a timeless, hypnotic quality lately. Everything our culture produces feels at once never-ending and meaningless — or perhaps meaningless because it’s never-ending. Movies explode into cinematic universes; series are designed to be binge-watched; every video, song or podcast tips over and auto-plays another; social media scrolls toward infinity and the news never stops broadcasting. An everlasting present expands around us in all directions, and it’s easy to get lost in there — all the more reason to set some boundaries. Now that my breaks are short and fleeting, I think more carefully about what I’d like to do with them, and I’ve found it’s quite different from the unimaginative temptations I would otherwise default to (flopping on the sofa, scrolling on my phone, becoming annoyed). Instead I’ll make a sandwich, do a quick French lesson, reply to a few texts, have a shower, go to the laundromat; and such humdrum activities, now that they’re restricted, have become sources of great pleasure."

From "This Time-Management Trick Changed My Whole Relationship With Time" by Dean Kissick (NYT).

"Pomodoro" is just the Italian word for tomato. The technique was invented by a guy who used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. These are quite common. Here — you can buy one on Amazon. Perhaps that would make the technique feel more real, more tangible. Oh, now I want a tangerine timer.

And here's the inventer's book, "The Pomodoro Technique." I bought that. I'm interested in breaking my concentration and getting little things jauntily done.

And I like the way it interlaced with something I heard David Mamet say in his Master Class "Dramatic Writing." It was something like: It's hard-wired in the human being to fall into a minor lull every 7 minutes and a major lull at every third interval of 7 — basically every 20 minutes — so it's best to think of 7-minute-long scenes and 20 minute acts.

I have a vague memory from my college years of calling out "7 minute lull!" when a conversation fell into what was about to be an uncomfortable silence. That was based on some sort of scientific study we'd heard about that said conversations have a rhythmic cycle with a lull every 7 minutes. Was it 7? I'm not sure. Does anyone else remember calling out "X minute lull" back around 1970?

Ah! I did some research. It is "7 minute lull" and George Carlin has something to say about it: