I'm sure this idea will help some people become more productive. Not people like me, though. Maybe I just get easily distracted, but I make small deals with myself when working through a mundane (but important) task.
Deals like:
- "15 more minutes and you can get a coffee".
- "You can't look at HN until 4pm".
- You get the picture.
A clock helps immensely with this. Sometimes a task feels like it's taking forever, but it's only been half an hour.
Sadly enough, I did this when I worked at $BIG_CO, not so much because it improved my productivity, but because the day was excruciatingly long with a clock staring at me in the corner. It helped a lot.
I actually use the clock for something other than time: it tells me when the computer is bogged down/frozen. If the seconds stop updating, it means something else is sucking the resources (usually some loop in the latest build of whatever app I'm working on).
I went half-way with this and went to the analog clock. It's so ridiculously tiny and hard to read that it takes effort.. so I usually don't bother. But it's still there to click on and see the time if I need to check (the time is added to the usual date item in the drop down if you go to analog).
Something that I would add to that is have someone you trust change your Facebook password (for the day, the week, until the weekends, however long). If you're like me, it's not uncommon to log in ~5-10 times a day just for a quick check. Doing so interrupts your flow the same way diverting your attention to an upcoming event does. However, when you get in the habit of not even being able to check it, that distraction disappears from your life.
If he does? More power to him. Clearly, he sees that he's more productive when that's taken away from him, and he's not letting it distract him from more important things.
I do something similar in that I asked my girlfriend to change the password to her Netflix account and not tell me what she changed it to so I cannot use it when I am not with her. When it is time for us to watch an instant video, I put a virtual keyboard on the screen, hand her a wireless mouse and she types in the password while I avert my eyes. (Note that this only helps if I remember to log out of Netflix when we are done for the evening.)
I am aware that many (most?) people are made uncomfortable by restrictions, even ones they chose with an unclouded mind, but I seem to like them if they reduce my need to exert willpower to resist temptation and do not get in the way too much.
So, I've now been trying this for I don't know how long (yeah, I mean that literally) with interesting results.
I hid the clock on my taskbar, put masking tape over the clock on my landline phone, and put my mobile phone face down and out of my reach. Then I set up my scheduling program to remind me when it's lunch or home time.
But my mind! That little part of my consciousness where it used to keep the time, it doesn't know what to put there any more. And it's freaking out about it, too.
I never realised before this how much mental effort was dedicated to keeping track of time. Now that I know, I'm definitely not going back. I shouldn't be doing anything my computer can do as well as or better than me. That includes keeping track of time.
I agree with his approach with the clock, however I can't afford to be completely lost time–wise, so I use an analogue representation of the time in the menubar that is useful for finding out the current _relative_ time (I'm pretty sure this is the only reason why it's there, since there is no way to tell time accurately from it). Screenshot: http://cl.ly/2W1L31370I380i130I0K
Dude likes not having a clock, writes a TL;DR longer than article explaining the same.
TL;DR It was an interesting exposition on the modern Man's relationship to time an the surprising effect of detachment that results a Vegas-like visual detemporalization of the visual environment, followed by further clarification that exhibited a clear lack of understanding of proper summarization techniques appropriate for an Internet audience.
Recently (and I suspect, at all times in the past) I've had trouble focusing with even one epileptic app throbbing in the background, or even redrawing some pointless animation or status update. For me one of the criteria for a desktop program is whether it can be prevented from audibly or visually disturbing me with its desires.
It may occasionally mean an impatient peer being upset at the lack of a speedy reply, but my thoughts are guaranteed to be uninterrupted unless the conversation is of sufficient importance to hold my attention after returning to real work.
The only 'active' notifications I have are mail and calendar, on my phone, which can be silenced temporarily with a single swipe. On the desktop, the only notification is Adium's small, static icon in the menu bar, which raises its wings to politely remind me of some ongoing IM.
I'd suggest disabling that almost pointless thermal monitor and the many similarly looking distracting icons long before I'd hide the clock, as it's the only reliable gauge of progress throughout the day.
I use XMonad as my tiling window manager, and I make judicious use of the "toggle struts" shortcut. When 'docks' set themselves up at the edges of the screen they define 'struts' (which are the areas that they intend to use) so that normal windows can avoid them. Then they are toggled off in XMonad, the tiling manager reclaims that portion of the screen, allowing the currently displayed windows to cover the docks. This allows me to keep docks that are informative, but reclaim that desktop space or just axe the visual clutter with a Super+b ('Super' being the Windows or Apple key under Linux).
Totally agree. I did this about a year or so ago and it's great. For me I was always looking at the clock in work, how long before lunch, how long before home time, etc. It was quite distracting.
I don't have the clock turned off, but all of the other cognitive distractions were removed long ago, particularly notifications of any sort. Sometimes I forget how distracting that stuff was because it's the first thing I do when I set up any new computer. For me, the clock isn't a distraction, but a popup for any of the million things that can happen on the intertubes is ridiculously distracting.
If I'm in focus mode, I'll also quit Adium, fire up think, and use Vitamin-R to do a pomodoro session. Works well for me, YMMV.
I'm giving this a go, though I must admit it feels weird not to have the time to glance up to - so I'm not sure how long I'll last.
Perhaps all those souls brave/stupid enough to try this should all meet back up in a week to discuss? :) We can share stories of missed appointments and accidental late nights into the early hours, before we realize the time and disappear off to bed cursing the OP :D
I read recently that stop bad habits, eliminate the triggers for the habits. These are the things in your brain strongly associated with the undesirable behavior. Seeing that clock could be one such trigger for many people.
Got rid of gmail notifier and also removed my last name from my user name for a little less clutter on the toolbar. Turns out I knew what it was anyway.
I started heading in this direction a few years ago, and now I'm running dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org), no menu bar, with a couple of scripts that I have to manually run to see things like the time or my unread email count. It did take some getting used to, but I'm definitely more productive this way.
Heh. I was just thinking about creating something similar and calling it 'status,' but apparently Ubuntu has gobbled up that very generic command name for upstart.
I like this idea. I have a 3 monitor setup(across 2 computers) using Synergy. This affords me the luxury(distraction) of always having my IM clients/browsers open. I've taken to using a focus/fader application so that when I'm not on the screen, only my coding monitor is focused. It helps a lot. I'll try killing the clocks next!
The two things in my mac menubar i definitely know i can do without are the two things i can't remove:
- Searchlight icon
- TimeMachine icon
Everything else in my menubar is either removable myself, or indicate state about my machine that i need to track (input mode, wireless connection, volume level and the like)
More to the point, every icon in the menu bar except for Spotlight can be turned on or off in the System Preferences. If hunting down those checkboxes is too much work, you can also Command-click on any of Apple’s icons [0] and drag them out of the menu bar. This also allows you to rearrange icons. (That works also for buttons on toolbars.)
[0] I only have one third-party icon in my menu bar (Dropbox) and it can’t be dragged out of the menu bar. I don’t know whether that’s the case for all third-party icons.
I only have one third-party icon in my menu bar (Dropbox) and it can’t be dragged out of the menu bar. I don’t know whether that’s the case for all third-party icons.
It is. Apple has their own private API for their "menu extras" and actually loads them into the windowserver itself. It's a major PITA to support one of these things, so only a very small number of third party apps choose to do it.
The alternative public API is basically just a tiny window for each item sitting in the menubar. There's no technical reason why Apple couldn't implement the same kind of command-drag behaviour, but thus far they haven't.
The system doesn't allow you to remove the Spotlight icon, but Time Machine's icon is removable (just Cmd-drag it off or disable it in System Preferences).
At an internship two summers ago, I found the last few hours on Fridays took forever, so I started covering the clock the corner of my screen with a post-it note with a smiley face on it. It helped quite a bit. :-)
Because I have my bar set to auto hide I totally forget about time when I work. Alarm reminders are great to remind you that you should take a break :)
