Drink a lot of water. The bladder can only be ignored for so long.

I wrote a script that set an X countdown time to shutdown. The script gave a warning at five minutes and 1 minute until shutdown. Once I set it I could not stop it. It would load automatically at boot time. It worked rather well until I decided to stop using it. I don't have a solution for giving up. :)

I have a cat

I don't do this to force me to take breaks, but it does that as a side-effect. I am constantly drinking plain water while I'm working, which makes me get up to relieve myself every couple of hours.

I have the opposite problem: I have to force myself to not take so many breaks!

I cook meals and do work in parallel.. you'll be forced to take breaks, to check on the steam, oven, air frier, marination etc.

I use classic pomodoro technique :) It helps even for my back.

A dog actually works for me

Relatable.

I’d use a tool like that if it could detect video calls in progress and not lock the computer while that’s happening.

Current plan is to acquire a loud and obnoxious physical timer and place it somewhere I have to get out of the chair to turn off.

This happens only if i am in the zone or working on something exciting. If that is the case, i absolutely do not want to break that streak for any reason whatsoever. Maybe you're a junior dev, but in time, these periods will become more rare and hard to come by. So enjoy it while you can.

been there “just one more function” is devspeak for disappearing into the void.

what helped me wasn’t forcing myself to shutdown, but giving my brain a clear signal that it’s time to switch gears. One simple trick that actually worked: before each coding block, I write down the last line I want to write before I stop. It gives me a natural off ramp and weirdly, my brain starts to anticipate that pause instead of resisting it.

On top of that, I use an app that’s built around nervous system regulation, not just timers or blocks. It actually changes how focused I feel while working. I don’t need to fight myself it gets me into flow and keeps me there longer, without the crash, music is pretty awesome too

Work on something you don't want to be working on. :)