Flowtime Troubleshooting: If you find yourself not taking breaks.
(Flowtime Technique & the Cheat Sheet)
This is bad. Breaks are vital to productive work. When you are fatigued and frustrated the same amount of input (time+energy) will produce less output (quality & quantity of work).
Breaks are good, especially physical breaks
* http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/jobs/take-breaks-regularly-to-stay-on-schedule-workstation.html?_r=0
* https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208131529.htm
* http://healthdecide.orcahealth.com/orcatheme_imagepost/take-a-break-it-may-increase-productivity/#.V66b_5MrKRs
So you’re trying Flowtime and you find yourself hours into a piece of work and totally burnt out, There are a couple of things you can try to increase the frequency of your breaks.
First, try picking smaller tasks. Try to choose tasks or segments of tasks that can be completed in a reasonable time, so that when you switch tasks, you take a break. Instead of “Math homework chapter 7.4” for your task, (which could take hours, believe me) choose “Math homework chapter 7.4 problems 1–3”. If you get it done in a shorter amount of time than you expected, cool you get a break.
If that doesn’t work. Then you have another option. This is the NUCLEAR option, the strongly not recommended, the temporary option for until you figure out what needing a break feels like. Set a timer. Set a timer for the maximum time you want to work without taking a break. I suggest ninety minutes to two hours. This doesn’t mean that you have to work until the max work timer goes off. If you feel like you want or need to take a break before that timer goes off, take that break. You did it! thats the point! If the timer goes off and you are in the middle of something and don’t want to stop, reset the timer for 5 minutes.
