Alex Stone

I programmed my computer to not let me on to these websites (or even allow anything from these domains) from 11pm - 5:30pm the following day and it’s done wonders for my productivity.

• Engadget
• TUAW
• Facebook
• Google Reader
• Nettuts
• The Apple Blog
• Flickr
• Vimeo

I also…

• Disabled all Growl notifications except for Skype and Dropbox. Growl notifications are very distracting. At times, they can even take over your a portion of your screen with what is essentially notifications about the ongoings of your computer. I’m not sure why I ever cared. The reason I got a Mac is so I wouldn’t have to worry about what I’m not working on.
• Switched from Hit List to TaskPaper (for work) and Things (for not-work) to keep me task-oriented. While the Hit List used to be my favorite GTD app, the idea of nested lists, endless tags, and other sorting and filing details can make tasks seems overwhelming. TaskPaper is about as close to pen & paper as you can get without a trip to Staples.
• Removed everything from the dock (relying on Spotlight for application launching). Frankly, I don’t need a bunch of apps in the dock “waiting” to be used. If I’m not using it, I need it off the screen. A little perk of this system, is that you have a precise visual on exactly how busy you are. When the dock starts getting too long, you’re probably doing too many things at once.
• Switched to a dark, low-detail wallpaper (so that the red icon badges would highlight more). Keeping a solid-ish wallpaper is important to the apps that use badge notifications to tell me things.
• Only checking mail between tasks, instead of every time I hit my browser.Mail, as ever-important as it is, is distracting. Tasks that come in from an email tend to throw your (mine, at least) brain off of what it’s currently doing. I’m going to make an effort to avoid this sidetrack and only check mail for new things to do, between tasks.
• No longer let iChat run during work/productive hours. Let’s face it. Being in an office by yourself all day is definitely weathering on the mental stability. You almost need to talk to someone about something. Unfortunately, these conversations have nothing to do with work, and are more distracting than helpful at times. So they’re gone.

Basically, it’s not so much about removing traditional distractions like YouTube (note that it’s not on my site block list) and instant messenger, but to keep me from interacting with anything or anyone besides my work, as well as to make the computing experience as completely minimal as possible.

UPDATE: I have also relegated all of my “keeping up to date on things” tasks like reading news and lengthy articles on web development to the iPhone app, InstaPaper and started using my Start.io page, again.

So far, it’s working great. Any other (serious) suggestions?