45 Minute Timer
Forty-five minutes, with an alarm at the end. A school lesson, a half of football, and about as long as most people can concentrate on one thing without a break.
Counting down
45:00
Forty-five minutes
Forty-five minutes turns up independently in enough places to suggest it is measuring something real. It is the standard school lesson across most of Europe. It is a half of football. It is the length of a university seminar once the lecture hour has had its changeover taken out. Institutions that had no reason to copy each other all landed near the same figure.
What they are all bumping into is the limit of sustained attention on a single thing. The decline is gradual rather than sharp, but by around three quarters of an hour most people are working noticeably less well than they were at the start, and the last ten minutes of a ninety minute block are usually worth very little.
For training it is close to the practical ceiling of a productive session. Beyond it the quality of movement drops, which is when technique goes and injuries happen. A good forty-five minutes is worth more than a distracted ninety, and it is far more likely to happen again on Thursday.
Used for work it is the block for something you have to get into and then stay in — reading properly, writing a section, working through a problem. If you want the break handled for you afterwards, the study timer runs blocks and breaks back to back without being touched.
What people use it for
- A lesson, a seminar or a tutorial
- A half of football or a training drill session
- A full gym session, warm-up included
- A block of deep work with a break booked after it
- A long simmer, braise or slow roast
How it works
Set to forty-five minutes. Start with the button or the space bar.
Over three quarters of an hour the difference between reading the clock and counting ticks is no longer academic — a throttled tab can lose minutes. The finishing moment here is decided at the start and never recalculated, so it cannot drift.
The progress bar and the tab title both show how far through it is, so it can be checked without switching to the page.
Editable to any length up to a day.
- Space
- Start or pause.
- R
- Reset.
- Tab title
- Shows the time left, so a background tab still tells you.
Questions
Why are school lessons forty-five minutes?
It is roughly the limit of sustained attention on one subject, and it divides an hour with time left for moving between rooms. Most European school systems arrived at it separately.
Is forty-five minutes long enough for a workout?
It is close to the practical ceiling for a productive session rather than the floor. Past it, movement quality drops, and that is when technique goes.
How long is a half of football?
Forty-five minutes, plus whatever stoppage time is added at the end of it.
Should I take a break after forty-five minutes of work?
Yes, and about ten minutes of it. The block after a real break is reliably better than the one after none, which is the entire argument for working in blocks at all.
Can I have it run the break automatically?
Set the study timer to forty-five and ten. It moves between work and break on its own for as many blocks as you set.
Will it be accurate over forty-five minutes?
Exactly accurate. It measures the gap to a fixed finishing moment rather than counting, so nothing about background tabs or sleeping screens affects it.
Can I set an hour and a half?
Put 90 in the minutes field. Anything up to 1,440 minutes works.