Software Reviews: Focus Booster Pomodoro Technique Timer

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management system that is supposed to help take away the anxiety of deadlines and time and instead help you focus in short bursts of 25 minutes at a time on one task. At its most involved, the Pomodoro Technique involves daily activity sheets, check marks, and to do lists broken down into 25 minute pomodoros. In case you might be wondering, pomodoro means tomato in Italian.

At its most basic, the technique takes your work load and breaks it up into 25 minute increments with 5 minute breaks in between. Every 4 pomodoros you take a 15-30 minute break and repeat. The breaks are meant to be time spent doing nothing or something unrelated to work or school work.

Focus Booster is a piece of free software, link available at the end of this article, that acts as a virtual timer to keep you on track and alert you when it is time to take a break. A key aspect of the Pomodoro Technique is an awareness of the time as it ticks by getting closer to the break. Traditionally a ticking kitchen timer that is wound up is used.

I use the Focus Booster to do a basic version of the technique. I decide on tasks to do for the next few hours, set the timer and work. When it dings, I take a break for a few minutes and go to work again. It has proven quite useful.

The program is very basic, you open it up and it is a small black bar with a timer and a colored bar that gets longer as time goes on. By default the bar comes up in the top left of your screen and blocks most full size window's browser controls, perhaps to minimize the temptation to click around. It stays on top no matter what you do, you can change this, but I like having it always there.

The minutes and seconds count down in the left hand side and the color bar grows longer as the session time runs out. A nice touch is that the color bar begins green and changes from hues of yellow to red as time runs down.

As it starts a faint ticking sound starts off for a few seconds. When it finishes a kitchen timer like "ding" marks the end of the work period and the bar ripples as it changes from red to blue. Focus Booster than shifts to a 5 minute countdown with a blue color bar that shrinks as the break time decreases.

You simply press the start button to launch the next pomodoro and underneath the time the number of "sessions" is indicated. Every 4 sessions you should take a longer break.

Focus Booster is elegant and simple to use. You can tweak just a few settings such as the length of time periods, window position, and sound effects. But by default the program is set up to work in the most ideal pomodoro method possible, so for best results leave it as is.

You can get it free at: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/ and versions are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Worth a try and great for students, writers, and anyone who wants to get more done while working.