Study timer

Long enough to get past the settling-in, short enough that you can hold attention to the end. For most people reading, solving problems or writing, that lands somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes — which is why this timer opens on 50 with a 10-minute break rather than the 25/5 the Pomodoro method is known for.

Twenty-five minutes suits a different job: material you have been avoiding, flashcards, past papers in short bursts, or any evening where starting at all is the obstacle. Both are on the timer above, and the honest answer is that the right length is the one you finish without drifting.

Not a reward, and not a chance to check your phone. The break is when the material settles — and a break spent scrolling gives your attention nothing to recover from, because it is still working.

Stand up. Look out of a window. Get water. Ten minutes of that beats ten minutes of feed, and you will notice the difference in the session after it, which is the only place the difference shows.

A timer organises your attention. It does not decide whether the studying works — what you do inside the session does. Two things have serious evidence behind them, and neither is about intervals:

Retrieval practice. Testing yourself on material beats re-reading it, by a wide margin and consistently across studies. Close the book and write down what you remember; the effort of recall is what does the work.

Spaced repetition. Reviewing across several days beats the same total time in one sitting. A session that revisits last week’s topic before starting today’s is worth more than a longer one that only moves forward.

By comparison, the specific session length is a convention. Use the timer to protect the hour; use retrieval and spacing to make the hour count.

1. Decide the one thing before you start the clock. “Revise biology” is not a session; “work through the enzymes questions” is.
2. Five minutes of recall first. What do you remember from last time? Write it down without looking. This is the highest-value part of the hour and the part most often skipped.
3. Then the new material, until the timer rings.
4. Take the break away from the screen.
5. End the day by writing down where you stopped, so tomorrow does not start with ten minutes of remembering.

At a break, not mid-session — switching costs you the context you just built. Two or three sessions on one subject before moving on is a reasonable rhythm, and on a heavy revision day alternating subjects between blocks keeps the day survivable without fragmenting any of it.

In another room, face down, on silent — whichever you will actually do. Every study guide says this because it is the single largest variable, and no timer can compensate for a phone within reach. If you want to know how much it costs you, log the interruptions for a week: FocusOS counts them and shows how far into a session they tend to land.

Start with the 25-minute timer instead, or read the guide to the Pomodoro technique for where the interval came from and which variations are worth trying.