This reminds me of the discover and defend modes from Jonathan Haidt's latest book The Anxious Generation.
On taking a break, I've often found it difficult to stick to the pomodoro technique because the breaks seem too frequent. But those breaks help avoid going down an unfruitful path for too long.
I ended up just converting to a method where instead of running the pomodoro on a timer, I run a stopwatch instead.
Then concept is still the same, in terms of focusing on the topic at hand. I no longer count down to my breaks, I just count up until I want/need to take a break.
It's basically just a glorified time tracker, I guess, but it was my solution to the pomodoro "break" problem, i.e. sometimes I don't want to take a break.
On taking a break, I've often found it difficult to stick to the pomodoro technique because the breaks seem too frequent. But those breaks help avoid going down an unfruitful path for too long.