Why I Started Using Pomodoro In Toggl
Okay, I’ll be honest — I didn’t even know Toggl had a Pomodoro feature until three weeks ago. It’s one of those things buried under “Settings” > “Features” > “Pomodoro Timer” that I had scrolled past a hundred times thinking, “not for me.” Meanwhile, I was burning out halfway through every writing session, tabbing between ten half-baked drafts and wondering why I couldn’t just finish one thing before lunch.
The toggle (hah) for Pomodoro in Toggl is tiny, but when I finally enabled it, I got a little timer icon on the desktop app. You can set your work and break intervals — I personally went with 25 minutes work, 5 minutes break, and a long 20-minute break every four cycles. You can adjust that in “Settings” too, but honestly 25/5 just works. It’s enough for me to keep my brain locked in without seeing flashing lights by the third work chunk.
Here’s how I use it: I start a writing timer manually when I’m about to dig in, and the Pomodoro timer syncs with that session. When the 25 minutes are up, it rings (the ding is mildly annoying, but I appreciate the jump scare), and a break screen pops up, blocking the Toggl window entirely. It’s not full-screen-obnoxious, but enough visual force that I actually get up. Sometimes I just scroll Twitter, but hey, no guilt — that’s the point.
I set one goal per Pomodoro chunk. Like, “write that first 300 words about the weird Zapier hiccup yesterday” or “outline just the H2 sections for the ClickUp blog.” Because of the ticking clock in the top bar, I stay locked in — not perfectly, but enough that I’ve gone from four-hour marathons of scattered thought to an actual rhythm.
If I keep that structure, I can knock out 5 to 7 Pomodoros before I collapse, and I’m not kidding — I feel less emotionally gross than when I used to write for hours without looking up 🙂
Break Timer Trick To Avoid Work Creep
Here’s what used to happen: I’d hit a 5-minute break and think “eh, I’ll just respond to this Slack while I wait.” Thirty minutes later, I’m debugging a Notion sync for someone else’s workspace and the thread I was writing? Gone. So I started doing something I’m almost embarrassed to admit — I switch apps during breaks like it’s a game show countdown.
The Toggl break screen just reminds you “Break time!” with a tiny countdown. But if you minimize it, nothing’s stopping you from diving into Deep Work territory again. So now whenever the break starts, I immediately:
– Flip over to TickTick and check off whatever Pomodoro task I just finished
– Grab water or something snack-adjacent
– Open an intentionally silly or low-effort tab (like r/meirl or Sketchy Microbiology flashcards, don’t judge)
Toggl doesn’t enforce the break like a bossy Chrome extension, but I noticed if I respect the break, my next 25 minutes *actually works*. When I ignore it, I burn half the Pomodoro checking dev.to or fiddling with my Zapier folder labels (which don’t matter, but my brain loves procrastinating that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).
If breaks start tempting you to blend over into thinking/planning/typing again, try keeping a separate non-work tab open in a sandboxed window just for Pomodoro breaks. Silly rule, real benefits.
Batching Writing Tasks Per Pomodoro Helps Focus
This one took a while. I used to go into a writing sprint thinking I’d just “write for two hours” and wow, what chaos. Some of that time was headline brainstorming, some was fiddling with SEO links, sometimes I drifted off into design ideas for header images. No consistency.
Now, every morning before I even start my first Pomodoro, I list what I want to write *by batch type*. It’s usually something like this:
| Pomodoro # | Task |
|————|———————————–|
| 1 | Write raw body for Section H2 |
| 2 | Write intro and call-outs |
| 3 | Structure the outline + cleanup |
| 4 | Final edit + sentence tightening |
Because each cycle has a clear shape, I’m not constantly pivoting between brain modes. I’m not asking myself to write a hook line *and* clean up grammar *and* double-check Zapier settings *in one go*. That mental switching is what made writing feel heavy for me before — I didn’t even realize it.
Honestly, the first time I tried this, I thought it would be slower. How could chopping a task into tiny Pomodoros be “productive?” But the blocks end up shorter *and* denser. Kind of like how each LEGO brick doesn’t seem like much, but five minutes later, you’ve built a spaceship.
The Odd Impact On My Toggl Reports
I accidentally discovered something kind of satisfying: the Toggl timeline now looks beautifully spiky.
Before Pomodoro, my logged sessions were these long 1–2 hour blobs that were mostly guesswork. Half the time, I’d leave a timer running while making lunch, then notice and awkwardly edit it after. Now, toggling the Pomodoro timer on starts and ends my log for me — so every session is 25 minutes or neatly ended when I take a break (if I forget to stop, the break popup reminds me).
The result? My Toggl weekly report looks like a heartbeat monitor in a good way:
| Time | Task | Tag |
|——-|——————–|—————-|
| 9:00 | Draft intro | Writing |
| 9:25 | Break | NA |
| 9:30 | Bulletproof H2s | Outline Build |
| 9:55 | Break | NA |
Seeing the slots like that makes me *want* to chain more Pomodoros, which is ridiculous, but my brain goes “yes! five spikes today!”
It also helped me actually bill more accurately. For freelance clients who want weekly logs, I can now just export the Toggl report and send as-is without shameful edits. Less context-switching and better reports — didn’t expect that combo.
How It Helped Me Write During Slumps
I have a weird writing block pattern. I’ll go days cruising through projects, and then BAM — staring at the cursor like a goldfish. Especially if I’ve had multiple meetings or debugged one of those inexplicable Make.zap-repeated-twice things (true story).
So I started giving myself 1-Pomodoro challenges on slump days.
“Just write *something* for one Pomodoro. Doesn’t matter what. Pick any article or draft or doc, and go.”
The funny part? I’d often hit minute 22 and realize I got into flow somewhere between sentence five and eight. It wasn’t magic, it was just unblocking the physics of attention. The ticking timer gave it shape. I wasn’t asking myself to be brilliant or prolific. I was buying a window of confined struggle 😛
Also, writing in short bursts killed the spiral of guilt-tired-delay — that horrible cycle where you haven’t written, so you feel bad, so you delay, so you feel worse. No full reset button needed. Just press play on Toggl.
Pomodoro Didn’t Magically Fix Burnout
Let me be super clear — Pomodoro is a timer, not therapy. It didn’t prevent all burnout. There are still days I feel logy from context shifting, or sapped from solving dumb automation bugs that shouldn’t exist (looking at you, Slack-to-Google-Sheets webhook that duplicated entries for *no* reason).
But the intentional boundaries that Pomodoro brings to Toggl gave me one tool I actually *use*. That sounds small, but when I’m overwhelmed, remembering how to “optimize output” or “structure for deep work” doesn’t feel real. Opening Toggl, hitting the timer, and knowing I get a break in 25 minutes? That’s something I *can* do.
And on rough days, that 25-minute chunk is enough. Then the next is. Then the next.
Watch Out For These Three Glitches
So it’s not all sunshine. A few things broke in funny ways:
1. **Desktop Timer Freezes:** About once every other week, my Toggl desktop app just stops ringing at the end of a Pomodoro. Like it finishes the 25 minutes, the work clock keeps running, but the GUI timer doesn’t shift to break mode. When that happens, I have to restart the app. If you see that, it’s not you. It’s…Toggl being Toggl.
2. **Mobile Notifications MIA:** On my phone (Android), about 30% of the time, the break alert never buzzes. It shows silently in the dropdown, but no sound, no toast, nothing. Nearly missed multiple breaks because I assumed the timer was still going. Quick fix: make sure notifications are whitelisted in system settings, but even then…it’s not reliable.
3. **Double Logging If You Click Too Fast:** This one drove me nuts: if I start a manual time entry *before* enabling the Pomodoro mode, then toggle it on mid-session, it sometimes creates overlapping time blocks. Like two logs running at once — one for the manual session, one attached to the Pomodoro loop. Super confusing in reports. So now I always start clean: toggle Pomodoro first, *then* hit Play.
None of these are deal breakers, but wow, it had me second guessing my own memory more than once 😅
Add Microreflections At The End Of Each Pomodoro
This one’s on me, not Toggl — but I started adding quick reflection bullets in Notion every time a Pomodoro ends. Just a tiny line like:
– Today’s writing came out clunky, but at least I nailed one joke
– Took too long to edit – maybe separate that stage tomorrow
– Felt super focused today. Less Slack-checking?
The Pomodoro break screen gives me a small window to jot it. I keep a single Notion page with a table:
| Date | Pomodoro # | Reflection |
|———|————-|———————————–|
| Jun 19 | 3 | Weirdly focused – maybe the music?|
It’s totally optional, but oddly satisfying. And it lets me notice patterns I’d forget otherwise. Like if I’m slogging on every 4th Pomodoro? Time to switch tasks or skip that one entirely.
I didn’t expect a timer to double as a mini journaling tool, but it happened. So now I get a little writing therapy bonus with each break. Could be worse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯