I simply set my phone to vibrate an alarm at intervals throughout the day. I was skeptical because it's the opposite of achieving deep focus, but its been a good change!

Please say more. I’ve been toying with this idea since hearing about this study, and the anecdote about someone on planet money “participating in the study” for a couple of days. I can imagine huge upside, but my fear is basically that I need sometimes upward of 3 hours uninterrupted to make my magic happen in a developer context. Just knowing I’m going to be interrupted is enough for my brain to refuse to make progress on certain tasks.

Think of it this way: you are a human. What did humans do 20000 years ago, what did we evolve to do before all this society bullshit? Certainly not sitting still for 3 hours at a time. We evolved to be persistant hunters walking down prey to death, foragers who rove over terrain for resources, craftsman and firetenders who cannot just sit still and expect the shelter to be built for them and the fire to be raging with no tending.

So yes, get up and walk around for 5 minutes. Simulate picking up some firewood or foraging for some berries. You will be all the more healthy for it, and thats something more meaningful to optimize for than getting more of your bosses work done.

Oh, without a doubt healthier overall. It’s the breaking up of 3 hour chunks that I struggle with. I have seen developer productivity tank with just 2 15 minute meetings placed perfectly to break up both the morning and afternoon. I’m simply trying to avoid this fate by intentionally doing it to myself. I’d like to know people who’ve made essentially the pomodoro technique work for dev tasks. The best I can do so far is hour chunks for most dev related tasks. But maybe there’s some inflection point that happens, like learning to break up your time like this forces some other way of working. I have many obligations that prevent long stretches of evening project time, so that means I’ve, through necessity, changed how I work on side projects, and I’m sort of wondering if something similar happens with these 5 minute walk breaks.

Not OP, but I'd say that a big difference between meetings and a 5 minute walk is that the walk does not imply a change of focus. Personally, my creativity and problem solving gets going when walking.

This is a good point. And I think this may be the key. Finding some way for the alert to get up and walk every half hour be not a distraction, just something you react to without breaking concentration. Because I can totally see myself just hitting cancel and getting up and walking without changing what I’m thinking about if the alarm wasn’t toi obnoxious. I already to that for certain alerts

Practice with this will help you. So, at first - it may distract you, but with repeated practice, you'll be able to sustain your focus even as you go for a walk.

i just got into a habit of drinking lots and lots of cups of tea to replace my coffee. I go get a new cup regularly, pacing around while it is brewing, then increased bathroom visits due to liquid consumed. It makes me stand up and walk every half an hour, and not because of an annoying alarm, which I would hate too, but because of a nagging physiological need, much easier to tolerate for me.