Usage tips after using Workrave for a few weeks

I gathered some insights, maybe worth putting onto the website FAQ as a user experience for others to learn from?

Preamble

I don't use workrave because of acute symptoms, so I had a lot of room for playing around with the intervals. My goal is prevention as well as focus restoration - not taking regular breaks, which tends to be the norm today, can often lead to getting sidetracked and staying there for hours. So the breaks are also gentle reminders for me to stay on track.

First use

In the beginning I set regular micro- and rest-breaks, a micro-break of a minute every 15 minutes and a rest break of 5 minutes every 40 minutes - somewhat inspired by Pomodoro and related techniques. But not much later I realized I postponed the breaks all the time and got annoyed. There were times where I had to stay on the computer and couldn't use longer breaks. So I first turned off workrave in these situations, but I quickly realized that I became sidetracked again and didn't think of turning it back on since I was already distracted - it's a vicious cycle. So I made a golden rule of never turning off Workrave except for gaming (even there I am still experimenting). Instead, I only turned off rest breaks in these situations.

But soon, two new problems cropped up: I rarely turned the rest breaks on again, and I got so habituated in clicking away the micro-break reminders (which appear every 5 minutes for me if I postpone), that even the micro-break was over an hour overdue once! So I adjusted my settings: I would simply only use micro-breaks, since these turn into rest breaks from time to time anyways, and I wouldn't allow postponing them as well as restrict them to 2 reminders, so they are regularly enforced.

Readjustments

Since this was working fairly well now, I wanted to extend it again. I realized that I may move the micro-break to the rest break, so I can still have the exercises. Thus I currently have a rest break of 2 minutes every 30 minutes with the aforementioned no-postpone and limited to 2 alerts, and added a micro-break back in, every 10 minutes for 20 seconds, without alert.

A lesson to learn

If you find yourself postponing breaks or annoyed by them, reconsider - should you actually have these breaks? Then enforce them - no skip, no postpone, and limit the alerts (but do use them if the break is more than a few seconds, so you're not caught cold). But maybe, you also need to make your breaks more relaxed/natural instead. Find your rhythm :)

rcaelers / workrave-website