Keep Your Breaks on Schedule with Breaker

It’s easy to get tied up and carried away with work, especially when self employed or working from home. There can also be an equal tendency to get distracted from work, taking too many breaks throughout the day and decreasing productivity and profits. If reminders could be given to take breaks, it would be easy for workers to stay productive and not waste time with distractions, and also to not forget to take breaks when they could provide a much-needed rest that can boost overall productivity.A Windows app known as breaker aims to correct this problem. Breaker is a small, unobtrusive application that tells users when it’s time to take a break and when to get back to work. It is easy to set up and simple to use.

Breaker users can program the application to notify them of break and work times in any way they see fit. Since it’s most likely to be used by those who perform most of their work on a computer, it can be especially useful for tracking the 20-20-20 rule, which pertains specifically to computer users. The rule says that to alleviate eye fatigue, computer users should work for twenty minutes, then stare at an object twenty feet away for twenty seconds. This cycle is to be repeated throughout the workday, but it can be extremely difficult to keep track of time and notice the passage of each twenty minute interval. Breaker can notify the user that it’s time to look away from the screen, and then alert the user twenty seconds later that it’s time to get back to work.

Breaker can also be used for more conventional break cycles. Whether the user likes to break for ten minutes every two hours or five minutes out of every thirty, the app can easily be set up to do this.

Breaker is available for windows as a free download. The .NET Framework 2.0 is required for a successful installation.