I can believe it works differently for others, but for me the pomodoro technique works very well. When I'm "in the zone" and banging away, I am much more likely to _fail_ to notice that there is a much easier approach that I could be trying. Interrupting my work occasionally for a few minutes, and then coming back, vastly increases the odds I will realize, "oh wait, instead of spending the next three hours doing this thing here, I could change a bit of this other part of the codebase and not even need that."

Just my experience.