Just by accident, I seem to have hit a big productivity enhancer.
I was tinkering with my desktop settings (on ye ‘olde Mac) and decided to make the toolbar hide itself. Some people like this feature, some people don’t. I’m getting more and more like my friend Alan in that I want every single one of the available pixels to be available to me. I’m not as freako as he is. He turns off the borders and control buttons in his window environment and does almost everything with chords on the keyboard.
Anyway, along with my usual policy of no-sound unless I’ve got the headphones in…this removed all of the stimuli associated with a new email message.
Suddenly, I find myself having these 20, 30 minute…even hour long stretches of focus…and code is getting written. I feel smarter..better looking…okay, not better looking, but it’s helped that feeling of helpless ADHD I usually have when I try to concentrate for longer than a few minutes.
So: Remove the clanging bells, the jumping fish, the Drew Barrymore shriek…whatever you’ve got to announce new mail. It just might make you smarter.
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