4 Minute Timer
A 4 minute timer counts down 240 seconds and sounds an alarm when it reaches zero. That is 0.07 decimal hours on a timesheet, or 6.67% of an hour.
A four minute timer is one full Tabata block, which is the only reason this particular length has a following.
Paused at 4:00
Your focus time, counted and kept
A countdown tells you when the block ends. PomoTodo records that the block happened, which task it went to and what the week added up to, so a month of 4 minute blocks becomes something you can actually look at.
Free plan tracks unlimited focus time across unlimited tasks. No card required.
The 4 minute timer at a glance
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Length | 4 minutes |
| Seconds | 240 |
| Decimal hours | 0.07rounded |
| Clock format | 0:04 |
| Share of an hour | 6.67% |
| Blocks per hour | 15 |
| Blocks per 8 hour day | 120 |
| Pomodoros (25 min each) | 0.16 |
| Decimal hours are rounded to two places, which is how payroll systems record them. Blocks per hour and per day count whole blocks only and ignore the break between them, so a working day fits fewer in practice. | |
What a 4 minute timer is used for
Tabata intervals, the four minute mile, and French press coffee.
- A Tabata block
- Tabata is eight rounds of twenty seconds of work and ten seconds of rest, which totals exactly four minutes.
- French press coffee
- Four minutes of steeping before plunging is the standard method, and the grounds keep extracting until you do.
- Mile pace attempts
- The four minute mile stood as the barrier until Roger Bannister broke it in 1954, and it remains the round number runners pace against.
- The 4-7-8 breathing pattern
- Four minutes covers roughly twelve cycles, which is well past the four-cycle starting dose usually recommended.
4 minutes in other units
- 4 minutes is 240 seconds.
- On a timesheet, it is recorded as 0.07 decimal hours.
- It is 6.67% of an hour.
- 15 of them fit into one hour.
- An eight hour working day holds 120, before any break between blocks.
- Against the classic twenty-five minute Pomodoro, it is 0.16 blocks.
Converting a different length is what the minutes to decimal hours converter is for, and adding several together is what the hours calculator does.
Timers either side of 4 minutes
If 4 minutes is the wrong length, the two nearest are 3 minutes and 5 minutes.
Questions about the 4 minute timer
Why is a Tabata exactly four minutes?
Because the protocol is fixed at eight rounds of twenty seconds of maximum effort with ten seconds of rest. Eight times thirty seconds is two hundred and forty seconds, or four minutes. The original study by Izumi Tabata used that structure on stationary bikes.
How many seconds is a four minute timer?
Two hundred and forty seconds.