I’ve got RSI – it’s sort of the universal programmer’s / anyone who works with a computer all day malady. Last year I used to have pain and swelling in my hands after I came home from work. Now I see a chiropractor regularly. He uses the Activator technique to adjust me and advised me to do regular stretching.

The regular stretching part used to trouble me though. When I get in the zone listening to music on my headphones, I can totally get into the world of code and lose track of all time and space. So I was happy to beta test a new app by Red Sweater Software called FlexTime. Basically, it is an unobtrusive timer that you can set and forget – it will trigger certain actions at specified times. It recently went 1.0 on August 17th.

For me, I just need to get up every hour for a few minutes to get my blood moving and do some stretches for my hands and neck. I personally use one of the example routines that comes with the app called “Break Reminder”. I like to think that I inspired it but in any case its perfect for me. I start up the routine and then hide the app. Ten minutes before the hour is up, it puts up a message saying “Time for a Break!” in a window that I have to acknowledge. That’s important because otherwise I would just ignore it. That’s my cue to do my stretching. Anyways I’ve found that sometimes I forgot to fire up FlexTime and I wouldn’t feel so good that day because I wasn’t reminded of my stretches. So if you’ve got RSI, go try out FlexTime!