This Modern World. They're kidding about handing that contract to Halliburton, right? [Salon.com]

» I love this cartoon!

I've had a couple of comments about my use of the Break Reminder software I mentioned in an earlier posting.  These are to the effect that people think it would be quite disruptive to be interrupted so much, the you lose your flow, and that you are "on break" too much of the time to get anything useful done.  These are all valid concerns.

However for me, priority 1 is not to lose the use of my hands and that means managing my pain levels carefully.  On bad days I use the settings that I indicated, on better days -- like today -- I step down a notch (4 minutes work time, 20 second micropauses, 12 micropauses to a rest break, 10 minute rest break).

Even so it's not as bad as you might think.  A micropause is not a telephone call, it does not involve a "thought interrupt."  I can keep my flow and continue to think about what I am doing.  For example I used a micropause a second ago to form this the though I have just written.  Of course it's not the same as just typing away, but I can't do that or my pain levels get too high.

Rest breaks are more likely to interrupt your flow, but on the lower setting I only get about one of those an hour.  That's probably as long as I could flow usefully without a break anyway.

In summary, yes adding these kind of breaks does impact on the amount of work you can do, yes it interrupts you to some degree but it it also keeps me working without excessive pain.  And that's what it's all about!