Runs, not hours: why short honest runs beat long leaky ones

Runs, not hours

The best-known focus method is the Pomodoro Technique, which Francesco Cirillo developed as a university student: work for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. Lots of people like it, and a set length is one less thing to decide.

On an ADHD day, though, a fixed block can leak. Your attention leaves at minute 9, and the next 16 minutes are spent near the work rather than in it. On the clock they still look like work. A week of them adds up to a total that says little about your focus.

Our timer counts runs instead. A run is the unbroken stretch from pressing start to the moment you notice your attention has gone somewhere else. An afternoon at the desk with a tab open tells you less than 4 honest 20-minute runs.

What the research found

In lab tasks, attention tends to drift more the longer a task goes on. In a 2014 study by Thomson and colleagues, minds wandered more as two tasks went on. Performance slipped along with it. It wasn’t a study of ADHD.

You might expect ADHD attention to simply run out sooner. A 2012 meta-analysis by Huang-Pollock and colleagues pooled 47 studies of children with ADHD on long, repetitive attention tests. Children with ADHD did less well overall. But the extra slide as a test went on was only small to moderate, and few studies measured it. So the evidence that ADHD attention fades faster is thinner than you might think.

A finding with far more behind it is unevenness. A 2013 meta-analysis by Kofler and colleagues pooled 319 studies that timed how fast people respond, over and over. People with ADHD were less steady from moment to moment, and the gap was bigger in children than in adults. Other conditions showed it too, so it isn’t unique to ADHD. These were short lab tasks, and moment to moment isn’t day to day. Still, it may sound familiar: a length that’s easy on Tuesday can be hard on Thursday.

That may be the bigger trouble with one fixed length. If the right length shifts from day to day, your runs show it. A fixed block hides it.

What the average run tells you

Your average run is how long your attention usually holds before something breaks it. You end a run when you notice your attention has gone, so the time after that stays out. Some drift before you noticed still gets in, but far less than in a block. A total grows with time spent. An average grows with attention held. If your runs average 14 minutes, a 15-minute length is a realistic target. A 45-minute one probably isn’t yet. If your average dips for a week, that’s information, not a verdict.

Try this week

Pick one length for the week, one you think you’d finish most times, even if that’s 15 minutes. Use it for every run. When your attention goes, end the run there instead of sitting it out. A stray thought you catch straight away doesn’t have to end it. Answering a message does. At the end of the week, look at your average run once. If it sits close to your length, try one step up next week. If it’s well under, try one step down. That isn’t going backwards. It’s the plan fitting you better. Missing a few days is fine. No timer handy? Jot down the time you start and the time you notice you’ve drifted.

Let the runs show you

1. Under the clock, Length offers 15m, 25m, 30m, 45m and 60m. Custom takes any other whole number of minutes, up to 6 hours. The chips hide while the clock runs.
2. Press Start focus. When your attention goes, press I got distracted. The run is logged and the clock stops. Nothing counts until you press Start focus again.
3. Reach zero and the run ends with a short chime: a full run. That’s Stop at zero, under Settings → Timer → When time’s up.

A run stops at its length, so an average close to your length means you’re finishing most runs. That’s the sign to try the next chip up.

In the full layout, Today shows Avg run, Longest, Focused and Resets. For the week, set the chart to 7d. It’s headed Average uninterrupted run. Each bar’s height is that day’s average run, and a dashed line marks your average across the 7 days. That line is the number to check. Signed in, if 3 short runs in a row end in a distraction, the timer offers a shorter length. It says the target is wrong for today, not you.

25 minutes isn’t magic

The 25 comes from one student’s system for his own work. We couldn’t find a study that tested 25-minute blocks with people who have ADHD. Two recent studies with students point different ways, and neither was about ADHD. In a 2023 study by Biwer and colleagues with 87 students, those given short breaks at set times felt less tired, more focused and more motivated than those who chose their own breaks. In a 2025 study by Smits and colleagues with 94 students, 25-minute blocks made no overall difference to tiredness or motivation, compared with two other ways of timing breaks. In both, how much people got done was about the same. The best length is the one your runs say you can finish.