Work&Rest

It’s a well known fact that staying focused on an activity for too long is pretty harmful, especially if it’s work. You need to take some time off every once in a while, but this is easy to forget. Luckily, if your work involves spending time in front of the computer, then Work&Rest can neatly remind you when it’s time to take five.

Note that the application requires no installation to function and is good to go from the moment download is done. Although this means you can carry it and use on other PCs directly from a thumb drive, you do need to be sure that the target PC is fitted with Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable.

Running the application brings up the configuration panel to look over, or modify rules of the operation. Work and rest intervals can be configured by simply writing down different values. These values represent minutes, and you can assign a hotkey command to have the rest window closed when you’re ready to get back to work.

Additional options can be set to make the application run with Windows so that it’s already loaded by the time you reach the desktop. Working hand-in-hand with this is the option to start the application minimized in case you’re happy with the initial configuration of time intervals.

Applying changes sends the application to the tray area. The corresponding timer is a countdown timer which neatly adjusts in real time to inform you how much is left until break time. Sadly, you can’t set a custom message to appear, or lock the workstation for the duration of the break.

All things considered, we can state that Work&Rest is a lightweight, practical tool to keep around if you don’t feel like you’re getting enough breaks during daily routines. Even though it doesn’t come with advanced options or restrictions, it’s sure to remind you to take it easy for a few minutes.