We’re always searching for the next best thing to help us start and stay more productive, often taking longer in our search than we are doing what we’re avoiding. Human attention and human willpower are finite things that eventually run low. The secret to productivity is maximizing and prioritizing those two aspects. There’s no easier way than using a technique known as a Pomodoro timer.

Invented by Francesco Cirill in the 1980s, these are blocks of time set as 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes to rest, repeated up to four times to maximize your efficiency. The reasons why this is so helpful are many, but the most interesting ones are the ways that they play on our psychology in a way that insists on us not procrastinating. Procrastination often happens when we get in our heads about the intimidation of a task, whether it be in length, complexity, or effort. Sitting for hours with no end in sight can be difficult — it’s hard to even know where to start. The beauty of the pomodoro is that it’s only 25 minutes. That’s not intimidating or complex at all; just set the timer and get as far as you can. The timer goes off, you rest for 5 minutes, and suddenly you have so much work done and you’re in such a flow that it makes you want to do it again. Because you’re actually doing it. It also helps tremendously to time out your day because of how well they work in 1-hour increments.

It takes exactly an hour to complete two sets of 25 minutes each, with a 5-minute break in between. It also creates a sense of urgency as you’re working and seeing the clock tick down; I’ve been using one myself to write this article. This technique can also be applied to other tasks like timing yourself in the gym or stretching, but I’ll get into that in another article. Please try a good Pomodoro timer for yourself and see how productive you can be. Remember, I was, I am, and I will be; we are never trapped by who we are or what we have done; be better, do better.