My trick may sound stupid, but it does work and is beneficial in two senses. What I do is to drink quite a lot of water while coding.<p>I have a 1 litre bottle that I must empty and refill at least twice a day. Every time I need to refill the bottle or... empty myself, I seize the opportunity to rest for 5 minutes. That's all.<p>I <i>guarantee</i> you <i>will</i> get up from your chair and leave everything you're doing.
How hard is it to just walk away when a script tells you to or even forces you out for 1 minute or so? And besides that I know dvorak (I could pick another lay-out), most of my passwords are muscle-memory. I don't actually know them. I once saw a password of mine somewhere in a saved passwords list, thinking it was one I must have used once and then forgotten, but it turned out (after trying it) that I type it almost every day. It also wouldn't be the first time that I have to lookup a keyboard layout to login to our router.<p>Yes, passphrases are probably a better idea, but by the time I realized this I already had enough strong passwords remembered. Most of my passwords are also designed to be fast to type (on a qwerty keyboard, that is) while still providing enough entropy, so passphrases would be slower.<p>Anyway, this tool won't work for me, and it looks a lot like addiction to me if you can't walk away when someone or something tells you to. I forget the time often enough, but unless playing in a clanmatch or something, I don't need a screensaver to blank my screen and lock me out.
The (rather convoluted) plan seems to consider Dvorak so fantastically hard, that the user <i>never</i> just learns to write his/her password using it, but <i>must</i> look up a reference on a different machine every time.<p>I've never used Dvorak, but I think I would be able to memorize <i>a single string</i> after having been forced to type it, after a while.
I'm a fan of the BreakTime app for something similar (and a bit easier). But I find it very challenging to be forced into breaks, especially for how often you are supposed to take them.<p>I think what would be ideal is a script that would detect when my system was idle for, say, 15 or 30 seconds. It would then check the last time I took my break. If it had been past a predetermined time, then it would prompt me for a break.<p>With forced break apps I find it very annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a thought, or line of code, and end up disabling those apps.
A couple of flaws with this:
1. After being forced to type it in once, I would remember the password in the scrambled form
2. Cutting off active thought processes during mid-thought would cause certain ideas to be lost
3. If you work for an employer who expects you to work constantly, they are going to complain when you very clearly sit in front of a locked screen periodically.
For people who don't need to be actively locked out of their computers in order to have the sense to take a break, but still often forget to take a break for hours:<p>Search for an 'hourly chime' app on your smartphone, have it go off every hour on the hour with a nice big ben or similar sound.<p>This works for me, anyway. Most of the time.
Pomodoro was a popular technique for this, has it fallen out of fashion? I used Pomodoro a lot and liked it quite a bit. At my current job we pair program mostly, and Pomodoro doesn't work so well in that situation.
Check out workrave: <a href="http://www.workrave.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.workrave.org/</a><p>Same idea, easier to set up, and includes some animated exercises you can do at the start of your breaks
I'm doing juggling breaks every time, when I'm stuck or need a time to think. Not sure why it works for me, timers were not working, i just ignored them.