Hey Mary Jo! Thanks for sharing your experience. I also have ADHD and have experienced “hyperfocus” of 3–5 hours.

One of the core symptoms of ADHD is time blindness, so you’re exactly write that “25 minutes of work” with a “5 minute break” leads to tons of distractions. I’ve overcome this and finally made the pomodoro work for ADHD brain. I’ll be writing some articles about it in the next few months.

What I do is use a visual timer (called “time timer” as a physical object and “visual timer" as a free app on my Android phone).

It turns the 25 minutes into a whole pie, and that works great as a focus tool. It also takes away the option to use my phone, so I have to focus on my actual work (usually learning or writing). As the pie disappears, I have a real sense of how long the work will take, in a way that “25 minutes” never works for me.

Then I don’t time my break, I just do whatever I want for a few minutes until I’m ready to re-engage. You should try it — it works great! I also schedule 25min breaks after every work session. So for me it’s Learn x 1 x 25min, Write x 1 x 25min, Break x 1 x 25min, and I repeat that format. Cheers!