[KeybInterrupt]

I've added an hourly chime to my work computer's clock, similar to a Casio wristwatch. It's a subtle reminder of the passing time, prompting me to pause, reflect, and reassess my actions to stay on track and avoid procrastination.

I like this constant on screen reminder though and might give it a try myself :)

[teddyh]

  The gods confound the man who first found out
  how to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
  who in this place set up a sundial,
  to cut and hack my days so wretchedly
  into small portions! When I was a boy,
  my belly was my sundial — one surer,
  truer, and more exact than any of them.
  This dial told me when ’twas proper time
  to go to dinner, when I had aught to eat;
  But nowadays, why even when I have,
  I can’t fall-to unless the sun gives leave.
  The town’s so full of these confounded dials
  the greatest part of the inhabitants,
  shrunk up with hunger, crawl along the street.

— Plautus (c.254-184 BC)

(Originally posted 11 years ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7007731#7008338>)

[Y_Y]

(Originally posted 2225 years ago: https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Comoediae_(Plautus)_-_Boeotia )

[InfiniteLoup]

I did something similar with a Telegram bot in order to remind myself to look away from the screen, get up and stretch for a bit. However I started to ignore it in favor of "more pressing" tasks and now the chime has become just a faint signal somewhere on the outer edge of my awareness, too easily forgotten about. You need to condition yourself to not ignore it or it will lose its effectiveness.

[bmacho]

It probably depends on what your goal is. To get up and stretch every n minutes, a more forceful approach could work better.

But a just an hourly subtle sound can *just remind you that time passes.

[stryan]

I have a similar thing in my WFH office where Home Assistant will play a chime during at canonical hour[0], plus it plays the Westminster Quarters[1] at 5pm to remind me when the normal work day is ending. I find the chunks of time match up well to work/eat periods[2] versus the granularity of each hour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours#Western_rites ; for the work day the main chimes are at 7am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 7pm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Quarters

[2] I originally stole the idea from the game Pentiment, which uses the canonical hours as it's in game time system since you're working in a 16th monastery. A web app version of the clock is at https://pentiment-clock.vercel.app/

[hispanus]

If anyone is searching for a way to do this in macOS, the dato[1] app implements this rather nicely

[1]: https://sindresorhus.com/dato

[swah]

When there is a meeting too starting at the hour, its a bit too much :)

[TimByte]

Pairing that with the on-screen focus prompt could create a nice feedback loop.