Remind Yourself to Take Breaks With This Chrome Extension
We all know that looking at a computer screen for hours is a bad idea, but that doesn’t stop us from doing it.
Break Time is a Chrome extension that periodically reminds you to back off. With the extension, you can customize the length of the break and the frequency of the break. When it’s time for a break, you can get notified with a small toast or full-screen message that it’s time to stop for a few minutes.
If now is not the right time (and it never is), you can also postpone the break so that the notification reappears in a few minutes.
I used to be deliberately bad during breaks. For a while, I was convinced that sitting in front of a computer for eight hours non-stop, including my lunch break, made me a more productive person. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.
What finally broke me was that fitness trackers started offering 250 steps per hour. If you’re wearing a FitBit or a smartwatch, I highly recommend activating this feature (and perhaps using it instead in this extension).
Besides the fact that constant sitting causes many health problems, working for exceptionally long periods of time without interruption can actually make your productivity less productive, nothing more. Set aside a few minutes every few hours to stretch your legs and free up some space for whatever project you’re working on, which could end up being able to get you done a lot more in a day.