52/17 timer: 52 minutes work, 17 minutes rest

Where 52/17 comes from

The numbers come from DeskTime, a company that sells time-tracking software. In 2014 it looked at the 10% of its users with the highest share of time in apps counted as productive for them, and found they tended to work for about 52 minutes and then break for about 17 (DeskTime, "Does the 52-17 rule really hold up?").

Three things are worth knowing before you build your day on it:

It's a description of what one group of people did, measured by the company's own software. It isn't an experiment showing that working this way makes anyone more productive.
"Productive" means time in apps and websites tagged as productive for that person, so it measures the screen, not the work.
DeskTime reran the analysis on 2021 data and reported 112 minutes of work and a 26-minute break for the same top group. Its own conclusion is that no single ratio suits everyone.

So treat 52/17 as one data point that happens to be a good default for long tasks: noticeably longer focus than a Pomodoro, and a break long enough to actually leave the room.

What 52 minutes looks like

52 minutes sets as 9 columns by 6 rows, with 7 on the last row, centred. Fifty-two doesn't factor into a neat rectangle, so the app picks the block whose last row is fullest and keeps the rest square-ish.

The 17-minute break gets its own block: six columns by three rows, five on the last row, drawn in muted ink because a break isn't time burning.

A four-hour afternoon at 52/17

Phase	From	To	Length
Focus	1:00 pm	1:52 pm	52 min
Short break	1:52 pm	2:09 pm	17 min
Focus	2:09 pm	3:01 pm	52 min
Short break	3:01 pm	3:18 pm	17 min
Focus	3:18 pm	4:10 pm	52 min

3 focus sessions, 2 h 36 min of focus and 34 min of breaks, done at 4:10 pm, with 50 minutes to spare before 5:00 pm.

That's the catch with long blocks: after the third focus and its break, a fourth 52-minute session would run to 5:19, so the afternoon holds three, and 156 minutes of focus against 175 for plain 25/5 in the same four hours. You trade quantity of focus time for fewer interruptions. For deep work that's often the right trade; for revision flashcards it probably isn't.

Setting it up in the app

In Pomo, open Settings, then Session. Focus steps a minute at a time from 5 to 120, so set it to 52, and set Short break to 17. Pomo always has a long break, so set Long break to 17 too and every break will match. Or set a one-off 52 straight from the timer screen by dragging the face up or down before you begin; each minute of drag is one square.

By the Pomo team