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Tina Huynh
Tina Huynh

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Spent Too Much Time on Dev.to?

I love (and hate) that the team has this built in. Let me explain why that is.

At around 5 am one morning, I was up doing some research on certificates online when this window popped up:

You've been working hard

Having not been paying attention how many windows I had opened nor how long I had been typing away at my computer that morning, I smiled before clicking on the link. The link led me here where some soft, calming music played:

beach and soft music page

I'll admit, this made me completely forget what I had been currently doing. I had just copied something into my clipboard, which took me a minute to remember what I was planning to do with. It was a very nice lullaby which almost dozed me off back to sleep, even. I adored the idea of the team implementing a technique to remind their users to take a break from their screens, their workflows, and simply take their eyes off the screen and have a mental break.

What I do not like about this pop-up is that it kept. popping. up. For the rest of the day, whenever I would come back to dev.to, there it was reminding me to take a break and break a breather. I'd want to look up an article or just check in on the comments of mine but there it was again blocking my passage way. At a certain point, it was not a reminder of taking some time for myself but to get off the website/app in general - a very helpful resource in that matter.

Sure, there are plenty of other resources out there to turn to when this comes up. And you can simply click on the exit button, whenever it permits you to - each and every time it appears on your screen. But I wonder why the window appears so often during one day after being ignored, or even interacted with, by the user.

Any thoughts or opinions?

Happy coding!

Top comments (4)

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pandademic profile image
Pandademic

This should be a dev.to feature

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tmchuynh profile image
Tina Huynh

Haha thanks

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper

I'm pretty sure this was the April Fool's Day joke this year :-) it made me smile, more than the "Filters" on Stack Overflow, anyway...

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tmchuynh profile image
Tina Huynh

Was it? I didn't see mine on Aprils fools day. Probably the week before. I don't remember. I had drafted quite a bit of my articles when this one was posted