How do you force yourself to take breaks while coding?

Question

I'm a dev with zero self-control. "One more function" turns into 3 hours.Tried Apple Screen Time &ndash; I just click "Ignore" every time. Tried Pomodoro apps &ndash; closed them when they got annoying.What actually works for you? Hardware timers? Standing desks? Blocking software?I'm building a macOS tool that uses full-screen overlays with a 30s cooldown to bypass, but curious what approaches others have found effective.

al_borland · Accepted Answer

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

WheelsAtLarge · Answer

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. :)

abstractspoon · Answer

I have a cat

JohnFen · Answer

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.