Back to Guide

Focus Sessions: Pomodoro & Deep Work

Start timed focus blocks, keep the timer in view, and learn what your session history tells you.

Updated July 31, 2026

Tracking shows you where time goes. Sessions are how you take some of it back: a timed block where you commit to one piece of work, and FocusNow keeps the clock.

Two session types

Click Start Session in the top bar and pick one:

  • Pomodoro — 25 minutes. A short, focused sprint. Great for tasks you've been avoiding, or for warming up when starting feels hard.
  • Deep Work — 90 minutes. A long, distraction-free block for your most demanding work — the kind that needs your full brain.

    • An honest note: custom durations aren't available today — sessions are 25 or 90 minutes. If that matters to you, tell us via the contact page; it helps us prioritize.

    Keep the timer in view

    In Settings → Focus & Sessions you can turn on the Session Timer Widget — a small floating overlay that stays on screen during a session (choose Small or Large). It's not just a clock: the widget has its own pause and resume button, so a phone call doesn't cost you the block — pause, deal with it, resume. Two more helpers live in the same place:

  • End Reminder: the timer pulses red a few seconds before the session ends, so the finish never ambushes you.
  • Completion Chime: a soft audible cue when time is up.

    • Reading your session history

    The Sessions page groups your history by day — "Wednesday, Jul 1 — 2 sessions." Each row shows the session type, when it started, and how much of the planned time you completed ("21m of 25m"). Click any row for the full detail: every app and site you touched during that session. On a wide window, the detail opens right beside the list.

    That detail view is the honest mirror: a Deep Work block where 30 minutes went to a red-labeled site isn't a failed session — it's the exact information you need to place the next one better. Cross-check it with your best hours in How Your Focus Score Works.

    Housekeeping

    Need to clean up? The Select button on the Sessions page lets you delete multiple sessions at once. And if a session was interrupted — life happens — just start another. The history judges nothing; it only remembers.