Forced to take breaks: AntiRSI

A reader, suggested that I try AntiRSI — an OS X program that forces you to take breaks. When running it has two timers that count down. Every four minutes it reminds you to take your hands off the computer for a micro break of a thirteen seconds and every fifty minutes it reminds you to take a ten minute break.

During my mouse centric activities, such as photo editing and drawing, AntiRSI helps in more than one way. While the micro breaks help with my hand, the interruptions also have an unintended positive effect: they force me to take a few seconds anyway from the tiny detail I’m focusing on and back up to look at the overall thing I’m trying to create. I immediately liked AntiRSI with the mouse.

But, during my keyboard centric activities, such as writing for the journal, the interruptions really annoyed me. There I’d be, halfway through a sentence and nicely in a state of flow when bam, focus stolen and thought lost. AntiRSI caused real nuisance during my first few days on the keyboard, and I almost gave it up.

However, after about a week, I realized that my annoyance with the interruptions taught me a new behavior: taking my hands off the keyboard/mouse whenever I paused to think.

I started to do this because AntiRSI has a smart feature: it will reset the micro break counter if you don’t use the computer for thirteen seconds. So, by taking my hand off the mouse when I stop using it, I don’t accidentally move the pointer and keep the clock running, the same applies with my hands on the keyboard. A week and a half into using the program, I find it rarely interrupts me for a micro break anymore because I naturally take them.

The people who made AntiRSI also have a good aesthetic sense. It’s well integrated with the look and feel of OS X and seems professional. I hope the developers add a menu bar indicator that mirrors the dock icon. I hide the dock to gain screen real estate, so sadly can’t take advantage of their beautiful dock indicator. The only complaint I have about AntiRSI is that, after it steals focus for a break, it doesn’t return focus to the program you were using at the time.

I highly recommend you try out AntiRSI and give them a donation if you find it useful.