Inserting a break between stretches of concentration has been a long time favourite of productivity hackers and gained popularity thanks to a university student and a kitchen timer.

The Pomodoro Technique, named after the Italian word for tomato, was created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s.

He used a timer shaped like a tomato to schedule study breaks, eventually landing on 25 minutes of work before a five-minute break as the ideal block.

Attention is finite without intervention, according to Paul Ginns, an expert in educational psychology at University of Sydney.

“We wanted to test how we can restore attention and it’s delightful that it can be as simple as a five-minute rest break,” he said.

“It’s an easy productivity hack that is accessible to everyone.”

Individual attention spans, the time of day, blood sugar levels and caffeine complicate matters, but the recent University of Sydney study suggests that short breaks show promise under the right circumstances.

“You need to be doing something different for five minutes,” Dr Ginns said.

Breathing exercises or watching a nature-based video is recommended; checking Twitter is not.

“Move away from your computer or device, do some breathing or just sit quietly to rest your brain from the task,” Dr Ginns said.

The study, published in the journal Educational and Developmental Psychologist, instructed 72 university students to complete a series of timed arithmetic tests lasting about 20 minutes, expected to deplete mental resources.

Without a break, students in a control group then went straight to a short lesson on how to multiply two-digit numbers.

A second group were given a five-minute, unstructured rest using a countdown clock on their computer screens.

The third watched a video of a walk through a rainforest from a first-person perspective for five minutes before moving on to their task.

All students then completed a short survey on the extent to which they experienced distracting thoughts during their maths lesson.

Lastly, they completed a 20-question problem-solving test to see how well they could apply what they learnt.

On the problem-solving test, both the unstructured rest group and the nature-based rest group outperformed the control group.

While the virtual nature walkers solved more problems on average than the unstructured rest group, the difference between the two rest groups was not statistically significant.

Students in the unstructured rest group also reported higher average levels of directed attention than those given no rest.

“The Pomodoro Technique method … is a popular life hack and we may have just found the first evidence for it working,” Prof Ginns said.

“Other hacks, such as deep breathing or finding a sense of stillness are centuries old.

“Whatever you choose to do, offer your brain a total break for just five minutes and see how your attention improves.”