The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a kitchen timer to break work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for tomato, after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a university student.
This got me through college. As someone who gets easily overwhelmed by large tasks, saying to myself that I will only work on it for 20 minutes (I do a 20/10 split) made things manageable and also it kept me from gluing myself to the chair unless I wanted to do it which made it seem more like a choice. I would frequently get through a few intervals and then keep skipping the breaks as I got nearer to the end of the task. I highly recommend this technique to people!