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.