Between the weather, a bunch of stuff on my plate, and my girlfriend being busy all weekend, I’m going to be working. A lot. Which means I need Workrave.
What’s Workrave, you ask?
Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of
Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to
take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit.
Please refer to the feature comparison for a complete list of features,
and how the program performs with respect to other programs on the
market. The program runs on GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows.
Plus, it’s got a cute sheep as its mascot.
The anti-RSI stuff is great, I suppose. My current setup (standing desk, ergonomic keyboard and mouse) means my RSI is largely kept in check. What’s needed is taking a break. And Workrave manages that in spades.
This is the icon I use, by the way. Because sheep on bikes, man.
Every ten minutes or so, I have to stop for thirty seconds. About every forty five minutes, I have to stop for ten.
And do anything else.
Which means that I get a break. I can let my mind rest and my subconscious deal with stuff. And maybe even run the dishwasher. And lets me be more productive overall.
So if you hit me up on IM or twitter and I suddenly stop for a few minutes, that’s probably why. It’s for my health. And yours.
Workrave is natively available for *nix and Windows; it probably builds on OSX (see github), but there’s plenty of similar programs for you can find on alternative.to