Autostart, force resume.

[professor-k]

Would be nice to have options for pomodoro to start immediately after browser launch, and to resume immediately after pause end. This will make it even more strict. ...And that's what I'm miss in current version. Because I tend to avoid starting pomodoro in morning and after browser restart, also tend to make pauses longer that they have to be.

In all the rest - thx for great tool to deal with my procarstination. Guess my employer owes you :)

[matchu]

Interesting. What I don't see in here in a way to stop the timers: when I'm done working and have legitimately earned hours of break time, how do I end the Pomodoro cycle? That's the main reason timers don't start automatically: the standard way of ending the cycle is simply to not start a new work timer.

Thoughts? If we can't find a clean way to solve this UI issue, this feature might be better left to a fork rather than an options checkbox, because this fundamentally changes the way in which the extension behaves :/

[professor-k]

In my case that just means: time to go home:)

But I agree, that makes sense that there should be some way to stop timer even in this "stricter" mode.

I'm not familiar with development of chrome extensions, so not sure what exactly we can do with UI, so here some state analysis for the case we can only handle single clicks (and without adding extra windows). Possible states.

1. Pause ended: Click causes timer to run. In "auto" mode immediately skips to 2)
2. Timer mode: Only action possible, regardles of "strictness" of current mode - click to reset timer.
3. Timer run out: Again single action, click will cause pause to start.
4. Pause mode: Not sure what click does in current implementation. Guess click can be used to toogle "auto" mode.

But I have no clue how should icons look to make this obvious :)

[matchu]

Ahh, so this is like a work-only computer where you'd only ever be using it during work hours? Interesting.

Yeah, so here we have our trouble: there must be some way to stop the timer cycle, but, by the strictness philosophy, work timers must never be stoppable (or pausable or anything that disables site filters before the work timer expires). That means the only way to interrupt the Pomodoro cycle would be to think to cancel it within the 5-minute window, which, on auto-cycle, would be pretty easy to miss. Hmm.

[professor-k]

Why easy to miss? In my concept you will still have to explicitly start pause: that way you won't miss it and will get it only when you really need it. So that don't violates rule about never stoppable timer, and it won't make it easy to miss.

[matchu]

Okiedokie, I'm just misinterpreting this feature request each time I read it because I'm super tired. Sorry about that.

I'm now going to try to outline the current state diagram and see if I'm correctly rephrasing your modified state diagram:

1. Work timer is pending. Sites are not blocked. Clicking will start the work timer.
2. Work timer is running. Sites are blocked. If the option is enabled, clicking will restart the timer.
3. Break timer is pending. Sites are blocked. Clicking will start the break timer.
4. Break timer is running. Sites are not blocked. If the option is enabled, clicking will restart the timer.

Or, if auto mode is enabled:

1. Work timer is running. Sites are blocked. If the option is enabled, clicking will restart the timer.
2. Break timer is pending. Sites are blocked. Clicking will start the break timer.
3. Break timer is running. Sites are not blocked. If the option is enabled, clicking will restart the timer.

That is, we just yank out the work-timer-pending phase entirely. Does that sound about right?

Interesting. It definitely shouldn't be default behavior, but might be worth an options checkbox. I definitely don't have the chance to work on this right now, but I'll keep it on my radar.

[professor-k]

Yes, finally that's the right reading :) And yes, I didn't thout about this as about main mode, but only as an option.

Anyway, I'll take a look into sources. Guess I can tweak them myself.

[SeanRoberts]

Looks like I'm bumping a two year old issue here, let me know if I should take this somewhere else. I think the issue for me and probably other serial procrastinators is it's too easy to slack once you start the 5 minute break because after the break you're free to just keep slacking. I'm not sure if it's feasible but it might be really nice for sites to automatically block again at the end of the break and require input from the user to continue, either start another work cycle or "I'm done working for now."

[matchu]

Mhm, this is planned, and I just continue to be in a period of my life where side projects ain't happening :/ Maybe during summer? Maybe not? I don't really wanna make promises…

On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 9:14 AM Sean Roberts [email protected] wrote:

Looks like I'm bumping a two year old issue here, let me know if I should take this somewhere else. I think the issue for me and probably other serial procrastinators is it's too easy to slack once you start the 5 minute break because after the break you're free to just keep slacking. I'm not sure if it's feasible but it might be really nice for sites to automatically block again at the end of the break and require input from the user to continue, either start another work cycle or "I'm done working for now."

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/matchu/Strict-Workflow/issues/9#issuecomment-92370103 .

[SeanRoberts]

Totally understood. I'd love to say that I'll fork this and take a look but that's pretty unlikely as well. This plugin is amazing as is, thanks for all your hard work so far :)

[JoeMac84]

Still love using the extension. Agree this thread would still be terrific to add. In my work process the ideal non-default option would be to only break the workflow during the 'rest' time.

If this "strict laps" concept is enabled:

1. Work timer is running. Sites are blocked. If the option is enabled, clicking will restart the timer.
2. Break timer is pending. Sites are blocked. Clicking will start the break timer.
3. Break timer is running. Sites are not blocked.
   • In this laps workflow, clicking the timer during the "Break" time would break the strict flow. Step 4 would not occur.
4. If break timer not clicked to stop cycle: When Break Timer ends, Work Timer automatically Restarts.

Thank you again for creating a very useful tool in this distracting era! It helps my feeble mind greatly...