PomodoroHow to stop the phone from breaking your focus
Willpower loses to a phone that is within reach. Change where the phone is, and you need far less willpower.
Why the phone wins
A phone is the easiest interesting thing near you. Each time a sum gets hard or a paragraph gets dull, the mind looks for relief, and the phone is right there with messages, videos and news. Applications are designed to be hard to put down. Blaming yourself misses the point. The practical answer is to make the phone harder to reach than the work.
The routine before each session
- Distance. Put the phone in another room, in a cupboard, or in a bag with the zip closed. If it must stay in the room, place it behind you and out of arm's reach. Distance works better than any setting.
- Silence. Turn on Do Not Disturb or Focus mode. On both Android and iPhone you can allow calls from chosen contacts, so that family can still reach you in an emergency.
- Face down, screen off. A lit screen pulls the eye even on silent.
- Tell one person. A message such as "Studying till 7, will reply after" removes the worry that someone is waiting.
If the phone is your timer or your book
Many people study from a phone: PDFs, recorded lectures, this timer. Then distance is impossible, so tighten the settings instead:
- Turn on Do Not Disturb before you open the study material.
- Switch off notification previews for chat and social applications, or pause their notifications for the session.
- Move the most tempting applications off the home screen into a folder on the last page. A few extra taps are often enough to break the habit.
- Keep only the study application and the timer open. This site's timer can keep the screen awake while a round is running.
- If you can, download the lecture or PDF and switch off mobile data and Wi-Fi for the round.
Fixed times for messages
Decide in advance when you will look at messages: for example in the long break, at lunch and after the last round. Between those times the answer to every urge is the same: "at one o'clock". An urge with a fixed appointment is much easier to postpone than one that has to be refused for ever. When the time comes, set a timer for the check too. Ten minutes on the clock stops the check from becoming an hour.
Handle the urge itself
When the hand moves towards the phone, do what the interruptions page describes: make a mark on paper, write what you wanted to check, return to the line you were on. The urge is strongest for about a minute and then drops. Counting the marks is surprisingly effective. People who make thirty marks on the first day often make ten by the end of the week, simply because they have started to notice.
Group chats and study
Class and coaching groups are useful and also the largest source of interruptions. Mute them during study hours, and check once after the session for anything that matters. If friends study at the same hours, agree a shared rule: no messages in the group during a round, and a short chat in the long break. The group study page has a ready message for this.
At night
Late-night scrolling takes time from sleep, and a tired morning ruins the first rounds of the next day. Charge the phone away from the bed and use an ordinary alarm clock if you can. This one change protects both the night and the morning.
Do not aim for perfect
You will slip. When you find yourself in an application in the middle of a round, close it, cancel that round honestly, and start again. Each restart is practice. Over some weeks the gap between slips grows, and that is what progress looks like.
Questions people ask
Should I delete social media applications?
You do not have to. Moving them off the home screen, pausing notifications during study hours and keeping the phone at a distance solve most of the problem. If one application still takes hours, removing it for the exam season is a reasonable choice.
How will my family reach me in an emergency?
Do Not Disturb and Focus modes on Android and iPhone let you allow calls from chosen contacts or repeated calls. Set that up once and tell your family.
Is it all right to use the phone in the short break?
It is better kept for the long break. In a five minute break the phone rarely lets go on time, and it fills the mind just before the next round.
More guides
An independent site. The method described here was created by Francesco Cirillo, and Pomodoro Technique is his registered trademark. This site is not connected with him or his company. The timer is free, needs no login and keeps your settings and counts only in your own browser.