You blocked an hour for the quote. At 9:12 a client pings WhatsApp. At 9:18 someone walks over with “just a minute” in the open office. At 9:25 the accountant. By 10:00 the quote has not moved a line.
It is generally not a lack of willpower. In a firm of five to thirty people, being interrupted is part of the owner’s job: you are interruptible by default. The problem is when the whole day stays open to interruption, including the hour when you needed to write, price or decide.
Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro Technique started with a tomato-shaped kitchen timer (pomodoro is Italian for tomato). It is not an app to buy and not a morning routine. It is work blocks, and above all a rule for handling interruptions.
What Cirillo actually wrote
I went back to Cirillo’s text (2006 version). The “traditional” Pomodoro is thirty minutes in all: twenty-five of work, then a three-to-five-minute break. After four Pomodoros in a row, a longer break of fifteen to thirty minutes. You mark an X when the timer rings. You stop for real — not “two more minutes to finish”.
Central rule: a Pomodoro is indivisible. No half-Pomodoro. If you truly cut the block — you take the call, you follow the colleague right away — that Pomodoro is void. You start again. Cirillo is clear on this.
For external interruptions his strategy has a name: Inform, Negotiate, Call Back. You say you are busy. You propose a specific time — in twenty-five minutes, in two hours, tomorrow. You write it down. And you actually call back. Otherwise the firm quickly learns that “I’ll get back to you” means “go away”.
Internal interruptions — opening WhatsApp, checking mail, remembering something “urgent” — you jot them on a sheet and stay on the task. The point is not to become a monk. It is to stop letting every ping choose the next minute.
I am not pasting brain statistics. Cirillo picked twenty-five minutes because it held for him. That is all.
What you protect, what you let ring
An owner cannot put the whole day under glass. A building site that comes to a halt, a bailiff, a customer blocking a delivery: you pick up. The technique does not ask you to ignore real emergencies. It asks you to name them.
Before the week, write two short lists.
To protect (25-minute blocks): the quote, the costing, the decision you have been putting off for ten days, reading a contract, preparing an interview. One task per Pomodoro. If it spills over, you start another block after the break — you do not “merge” by working through the break.
To leave open to interruption: the slots when the team knows they can come to you. Returning calls. WhatsApp and the email thread. The open door. These slots usually fall in late morning or early afternoon, after a series of four Pomodoros. Cirillo even puts listening to messages and checking mail in the long break, not in the work block.
“Just a minute” in an open office is almost never a minute. You answer: “I’m finishing a block — I’ll come by at 11:10.” If it truly blocks someone else, you void the Pomodoro, handle it, restart. Voiding beats pretending to listen while you type.
WhatsApp Business, Teams, the Outlook chime: mute them during protected blocks. Not for life. For twenty-five minutes. The phone can stay within reach for numbers you decided to let through — everything else goes to voicemail, and you call back in the open slot.
If the same interruption comes back every day — the overdue list, the supplier PDF you retype — that is no longer a timer problem. It is a loop to kill. I have already written about this: automating invoice reminders. The site’s motto fits here too: if you have to do something twice, automate it. Pomodoro protects time; it does not fix a broken process.
One week, not a new religion
Monday morning, before the first call, pick two protected blocks in the day. Not eight. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Put them in the calendar where people can see them. Tell the team in one sentence: “Between 9:00 and 9:30, and between 14:00 and 14:30, I only pick up if something is really stuck. Otherwise write it down — I’ll call back.”
Use a visible timer: a kitchen timer, a phone, whatever works. Cirillo insists that you can see the time remaining. Keep a sheet beside you with today’s tasks, plus an “unplanned / urgent” zone for what you negotiated.
Every time you hold a block until the timer rings, mark an X. Every time you truly break it, cross it out and restart later. Do not cheat by counting half-blocks.
On Friday, look at the sheet. Count the X’s. Count how many calls were genuinely urgent, and how many “just a minute” requests could have waited twenty minutes. Often the surprise is there: most things hold until the interruptible slot. Not all of them. Enough for the quote to move at last.
If after a week the blocks still do not exist because the firm has no window where the owner can disappear for twenty-five minutes, the subject is no longer the timer. It is a question of who is responsible for what. info@z80.be, +32 494 111 041, www.z80.be — we look at the organisation, not at a miracle method.