If time is money then how much is break time worth? Just doing the math makes me cringe every time I take a break. Yet, breaks are important for our physical and mental health.
Most of us need a reminder to take a break and that’s what the Time Out app does. Think of it as a Mac app that gives adults a much needed time out. A break. The benefits are obvious. Better blood circulation. Mental clarity. Emotion well being. Is that worth free?
Broken Breaks
Too many of us have this bad habit of sitting for hours on end, trying to accomplish something worthwhile to justify getting paid, always worrying that leaving will make us look like slackers. That’s wrong on many fronts. Time Out is a way to have your Mac tell you to take a time out. Your health will improve. The snack machine vendor will appreciate the effort.
How Time Out works is simple enough. Create a Time Out. Set the break time every x-number of minutes.
Time Out has two basic breaks. A normal break and a micro break. You can mix and match, set how long each kind of break will last, and even set the app to count backwards if you happen to step away from your Mac.
Here’s the cool part.
When a break starts, the screen slowly dims, and a break theme appears. When the break is complete, it fades out again.
In other words, you must take the time out break. Time Out has lots of little extras, including a progress bar, buttons to postpone or skip the break, and even different themes to make the visuals worthwhile.
That’s the built in activity tracker above. What you get is a visual look at how busy you actually are during the day. It displays how many breaks you took and when.
Time Out has some built in automation functionality, too. It can display a notification, speak specific text, run AppleScript or an Automator workflow, even play a sound or some music, and then fade out as time to work begins again.
Not bad for free, right? There’s also a Mac App Store version.
