40 Minute Timer
Set for 40 minutes. Press start — it rings when the time is up.
Free from Ticka — the reminder app that rings like an alarm, even on silent. Close this tab and the timer stops. On your phone, Ticka rings even on silent. App Store → Google Play → App Store → Google Play →
This timer runs while the tab is open. If you need it to go off when your phone is in your pocket — that part needs the app.
Forty minutes: room for the warm-up
Getting back into a task after an interruption takes longer than it feels. Gloria Mark’s studies of office work at the University of California, Irvine, found people needed around twenty-three minutes on average to return to what they had been doing.
That warm-up is why short blocks often disappoint on hard work: a twenty-minute block can be spent entirely on finding your place again. Forty minutes absorbs the warm-up and still leaves a stretch of real depth at the end.
The block only works if nothing breaks it. Put the phone out of reach before you start, and treat the timer ringing as the only interruption you have agreed to.