I am writing this post in what is without a doubt the oddest productivity software I’ve ever used. My entire screen is filled with the image of a snowy landscape. Peaceful music plays, mixed with the occasional chime or hoof beats. My key strokes make the slightest tick. The software is called OmmWriter, and it’s part of a recent wave of “distraction free” software tools.
There has been a lot of discussion and a number of interesting studies about multitasking. From early on, computers have been good at performing more than one task at a time. Initially, this was simply a way to allow more than one user to share an expensive mainframe. Today, computers have become more powerful and can run many tasks — checking email, monitoring blog feeds, watching the forecast. Computers are excellent multitaskers, but it turns out people are not.
Recent studies have shown that constant multitasking does not make you better at juggling tasks, it actually makes you worse at focusing on one task. Our brains begin to look for and expect interruptions. And interruptions are bad. Another study shows that when interrupted, even briefly, it can take a person as much as 20 minutes to get their focus back.
Tools like OmmWriter block out notifications from email, Twitter, etc, and hide away web browsers, email clients, and any other software you have open. They also leave out distractions like font settings, bulleted lists, and other markups. Most are focused on writing, but some can be applied to any program allowing you to, say, lock yourself in Photoshop or Excel.
OmmWriter is for Mac, as is the similar but less new-age-y WriteRoom, which blacks out your screen with a CRT monitor-style interface. Macs also have the option of using Think and Isolator, two tools that can be used to make any application fullscreen and distraction free.
In the Windows world there’s CreaWriter with ambient music and relaxing background and DarkRoom for the CRT vibe. A little more full-featured and, perhaps more distracting, is q10 which provides things like word and page counts and timers. For other applications there’s Dropcloth and JediConcentrate.
Finally, for Linux users there’s a WriteRoom clone called PyRoom.
Of course you can always just close your email and browser, open your software in full screen mode, put on some tunes and get to work.
Tags: mac, mutlitasking, productivity, software