A gentle introduction to Workrave
2023-03-12
Continuing my journey towards a computing setup that strikes the perfect balance between productivity and digital well-being, I want to present an amazing piece of software called Workrave to you in this article. Everyone can relate to these situations where you have been starring at your screen for way too long, your wrists start you hurt and you need to go to the toilet badly, but you want to fix this last annoying issue beforehand and just can't find figure it out. Thanks to Workrave, this doesn't have to happen anymore...
According to its website, Workrave is "a free program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI)". In other words, it is a software to prevent you from starring at your screen for too long without a break. It does this by monitoring your mouse and keyboard usage (without storing any of the moves you do with the mouse or text piece you type), calculating the time you spend in front of your computer using this information and then forcing you to take breaks by blocking any inputs during rest periods.
One specialty of Workrave is that it diffentiates between so-called "micro-breaks", which are ment to be short, but frequent relax sessions, and longer "rest breaks", which are less frequent, but last for a few minutes.
You can even decide to be shown a random set of exercises during your rest breaks and get a bit
physically active - simply change the option
Number of exercises
in the
Rest break
section.
Last but certainly not least, it features a daily limit and long-time statistics to get you away from that screen back into the real world every once in a while and make you realize just how much of your time you really spend glued to the computer.
Personally, I like to take 30 second microbreaks every 29:30 minutes (so every half hour) and 2:30 minute rest break every 57:30 minutes (so every hour) since I found this to be the perfect balance between having time to relax and being annoyed by all these breaks. But try out what works best for you and let me know about your findings down below in the comments...