Reduce online distractions
These neat Mac tools will help you stay focused on your work
These neat Mac tools will help you stay focused on your work
It’s all too easy to sit down to work and find yourself still browsing Facebook, Twitter, the BBC or Wikipedia 30 minutes later. Permanent online connections are great for research and streaming, but they also represent terrible temptation.
We’d never claim manual typewriters represent some kind of golden age, but there were fewer distractions when all you had to look at was ribbon and paper. Indie developers ape these simpler days with distraction-free word processors such as Typed, Writer and Byword, which take you back to basics. Having fewer buttons and toolbars – the idea goes – means you should do less fiddling and more working.
The trouble is, even in a strippeddown environment like this, it’s still too easy to click elsewhere and start playing in a separate app – or to simply gaze out of the window.
Fortunately, help is at hand from a range of tools that can help you keep your mind on the job, and others that literally block out distractions, making it physically impossible for you to stray onto forbidden websites until the end of an allotted time period. So effective are they at clamping down on your network usage that even rebooting your Mac won’t circumvent the strict controls they put in place.
Here, we’ll show you how to implement a range of measures that carefully balance carrot and stick to create a digital environment much more conducive to working.