Working without distraction : my minimalist Macintosh experience
I hate to be disturbed. I try to end every day with an empty “Today” list in Things and an empty Inbox in Gmail. I don’t want to be interrupted while I’m working on one task. Most of the points below are tricks that help me empty my Things inbox and complete projects. In other words : they help me get things done.
About the Finder :
- I use a dark background (the fewer details the better) and the Mac OS Graphite theme so that only the colors get my attention (that means notification in the Dock).
- I dumped most of the icons from my task bar : I don’t care about the volume (I have three dedicated keys on my keyboard), I don’t care about how much battery I have unless the icon turns red. Jumpcut is a very useful utility for clipboard history.
- I removed most of the icons from my Dock : I only left the applications that are always launched (Tweetie already has an icon in the task bar, but we can’t remove the one from the Dock, yet). I use Spotlight to launch the other applications.
- I use Command-Option-H to hide every application but the one I’m using : I almost never need more than one window to focus on.
- I don’t use any notification system : no Growl, no Gmail Notifier, no Facebook notifier, and Tweetie task bar icon is set to never turn blue except when I got a direct message.
- I don’t use NetNewsWire on my Mac anymore. I only check my RSS feeds in the morning during my commute to work, using the new iPhone app. Breaking news make it through Twitter. Interesting-but-long articles go into Instapaper, I read them before going to sleep.
- Hazel’s default configuration help me empty my Downloads folder.
Safari :
- I removed the previous/next buttons : I use trackpad gestures for that.
- I removed the bookmarks bar : Command-L is my friend, and for the small amounts of bookmarklets I use, they’re all in the dedicated bookmarks menu.
- I hide the status bar. The prefpane Secrets offers the possibility to show a link’s URL if you move the mouse over the link.
- My homepage is Start.io : it’s clean and shows the links I open in the morning when I sit in front of my Mac.
- I watch YouTube videos within Quietube : video without the distractions.
- I read ugly online newspapers within Readability.
- I use ClickToFlash to get rid of the worst thing that happened to the web : Flash.
Gmail :
- I realized I don’t either need to read my e-mails every minute, nor to answer e-mails the minute I received them : I only check my e-mails when I’m not focused on a task. It’s more productive and less intrusive than a Growl notification.
- I make a smart use of Gmail filters so that only important e-mails get to the Inbox, and I immediately archive the one I read (and answered if needed). Gmail Labs provide a useful “Send and archive” button for that.
- j/k/x/e are my friends : I use these keys to quickly select and archive e-mails.
Interested in uncluttering your Mac? Read Minimal Mac.
