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I have an interesting trick where I have a piece of myself watching the rest of myself doing whatever it’s doing.  It helps me understand my inner workings quite a bit, because I can review how I was feeling and thinking after all the main activity is over and done with.

Reviewing the last week and a bit, I noticed that I’ve had periods of uptime then downtime.  This is normal for someone working at a computer, because at the very least you need to take a 2 minute break every 20 minutes, to catch up on your blinking and to stare at objects in the distance so you don’t ruin your focus.  If you’re not doing this, you’re doing damage.  If you’re an employer, you need to force your employees to do this, even if you have to put a timer on their computer.

But aside from the eye-strain (and tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetitive strain injury) breaks, I’ve had periods of mental “downtime”.  But it’s not like walking away from the computer when getting burnt out.  I take breaks under two conditions.

1. A major success.

2. An interesting problem.

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