How properly do you focus at work? For me, it very a lot is dependent upon how I am feeling that day, what else I’ve on my thoughts and a miscellany of different components. One approach I exploit pretty efficiently to maintain me targeted is a pomodoro timer, and at Mobile World Congress 2026 I discovered what I imagine could possibly be the proper AI pomodoro companion.
I first noticed Lenovo’s Magic Bay Tiko eventually 12 months’s MWC, however on the time it was only a idea. The little round module perches on the highest of your Lenovo laptop computer show, connected through the magnetic Magic Bay on the rear. The module is residence to an lovable animated companion known as Tiko, who you’ll be able to work together with through textual content or voice.
Equipment with AI brokers have gotten more and more widespread, significantly within the wearables area, with many firms beginning to supply pins and pendants. They will tackle quite a lot of duties, reminiscent of life logging and transcription. They will additionally perform duties for you, reminiscent of including issues to your calendar or checking your calendar to see if you happen to’re busy.
Tiko has quite a few customary agentic AI capabilities — it could actually begin and cease your music, open an online web page for you or reply a query. It’s also possible to work together with it by utilizing emoji. Give it a guide emoji, for instance, and it’ll pop on its glasses and sit studying with you whilst you work. However my favourite Tiko characteristic successfully turns it right into a body-doubling buddy, which I really feel could be helpful for retaining me on monitor on distracted days.
Do not inform me this little man would not make you need to keep on monitor.
Physique doubling is a method the place you’re employed alongside another person — both bodily or nearly — to maintain you on monitor and accountable. Tiko comes with a timer, permitting you to trace a targeted work session. Once you want a break, you’ll be able to swap over to “wellness break” for 10 minutes of leisure earlier than you keep it up. You may even select so as to add 1 minute of respiratory workouts, which Tiko will do with you, to maintain you calm.
A conventional pomodoro timer is 25 minutes of labor adopted by a 5-minute break, however that is versatile. I am enamored with the thought of a bodily manifestation of the timer perched above my display screen, with a candy animated good friend to assist preserve me in verify.
The excellent news for me is that Tiko is not an idea from Lenovo. The corporate desires to promote the Magic Bay accent later this 12 months — though it does not know precisely when, or how a lot it’s going to value. The much less excellent news is that you’re going to have to have a Lenovo laptop computer with a Magic Bay port, which I don’t. It is likely to be impractical to think about getting a brand new laptop computer only for Tiko, nevertheless it may sway me if I used to be already out there for one.
Lenovo AI Workmate Idea
Lenovo’s AI Workmate idea remains to be a piece in progress.
One other AI companion idea from Lenovo that is still an idea for now’s its AI Workmate. It is a type of stationary tabletop robotic, not dissimilar to the Pixar lamp, however with an orb for a head.
With a mix of cameras, microphones and projectors, the AI Workmate can undertake quite a lot of duties, together with serving to you generate and show displays or flip your written work or artwork right into a digital asset.
I requested the Workmate to make me a presentation about giraffes. Utilizing Lenovo’s proprietary fashions, it generated a three-slide presentation entitled “The Majestic Giraffe: Nature’s Tall Enigma.” It was factually correct, so far as I may inform, if disappointingly free of images. It is robotic head swivelled round and projected the slides onto the wall subsequent to me.
I additionally requested the Workmate to generate me a postcard of Barcelona. It displayed the work on the desk in entrance of me, and I scribbled some textual content excessive. The Workmate then scanned all the picture, together with my writing and despatched it straight to the printer for me, leaving me with a tangible memento to remove from our encounter.
I am unable to say I’d essentially need one thing as giant and hulking by myself desk, and I am not precisely positive what sensible use I work make of the AI Workmate idea at this stage. Nevertheless it was nonetheless enjoyable to play with, and attention-grabbing to see how tech firms are imagining methods to deliver AI to bodily life to allow them to help us in at our work.
