[TheHideout]

There is this idea of thinking fast and slow aka the hare brain and tortoise mind. I use the active time for the hare (fast thinking), and the break time for the tortoise to pass up ideas from the subconscious (slow thinking).

I've been using pomodoro for many years. Not continuously though because I find that my productivity level is extremely high while doing it and I start to get burned out because the intermittent breaks are not enough.

You might be interested in something called the domino technique to help with getting started / getting into flow. Basically you do something that is difficult but short that you can do to get a meaningful psychological "win" in a short period of time (5 minutes) to kick start your motivation / flow. I would post a link but I don't have a good reference on hand.