Background Zen

As I write this I have two fold­ers on my com­puter that con­tain desk­top back­grounds (wall­pa­pers) that I have col­lected from var­i­ous places online, total­ing 165 dif­fer­ent back­grounds to choose from. So what do I do? I have been talk­ing a lot on this blog about some­thing I call Desk­top Zen. Cre­at­ing a com­put­ing envi­ron­ment that is relax­ing and con­ducive to cre­ativ­ity and work­ing. Of those 165 back­ground pic­tures (some... Read More

Clutter Distracts. A Blank Page Inspires.

The same is true with a clut­ter free desk. I have on occa­sion writ­ten about clean­li­ness, clear desks, desk­top zen and your envi­ron­ment in gen­eral and how it can effect your pro­duc­tiv­ity. I have shared what my desk looks like a few times now, and each time you can see that I strive to keep it mostly empty. I have had com­ments from peo­ple who just don’t under­stand make com­ments about the way my desk and office appear. They often joke that I must... Read More

Alone Time

We are all more pro­duc­tive alone then when oth­ers are around us, focus on how we can lever­age that to become more pro­duc­tive is key. I want to first touch on what I mean by around us when I am refer­ring to people. I do not mean ran­dom strangers in a cof­fee shop, or other peo­ple in the room. I am refer­ring to indi­vid­u­als that you may have to inter­act with at some point. More specif­i­cally those around you that will need or want to inter­act with you. Look... Read More

The Unfocused Life

Do you ever have those days when you are hyper focused on every­thing you do and things get done with no prob­lems? Those days are the rea­son that I cre­ated this blog. I cre­ated this blog because I am often unfocused. A year ago, before this blog, I would have told you that I lacked moti­va­tion and had excel­lent focus and the rea­son that I did not get things done was out of not want­ing to get those things done. After a year of look­ing at pro­duc­tiv­ity,... Read More

Ultimate Productivity Tip: Do What Excites You

Are you a pro­cras­ti­na­tor? Do you feel lethar­gic when it comes to your work, or life? Do you just wish you could be one of those highly moti­vated indi­vid­u­als who are always get­ting stuff done? Do you want to be more productive? Well you can be, and all you have to do is the stuff that excites you. Read More  Read More

Be Simple

Over the past two months I have be work­ing at sim­pli­fy­ing my life. From the pro­grams I use on my com­puter, to what is in my junk drawer. Purg­ing all excess from my life, even in areas that I pre­vi­ously thought it would not matter. Grow­ing up I always thought that you could not have too much of a good thing, let alone a great thing. I thought this way right up until the point I got sick from eat­ing too much hal­loween candy. Even still, I thought that per­haps... Read More

Time-Free Computing

Min­i­mal Mac web­site since it started up. He has posted a ton of tips on the site for sim­pli­fy­ing the look and feel of your Mac. One of the largest changes I have made thanks to this site, is remov­ing menubar icons, as I wrote about last week. The largest of those removals was get­ting rid of the clock. This has been one of the sin­gle great­est and most pro­duc­tive changes that I have made, since I started using OmniFocus. Com­put­ing with­out a Clock Read... Read More

Focus Manifesto

This is an ungo­ing book that Leo Babauta is writ­ing, and post­ing the chap­ters online for free as he write the book. This con­tin­ues his theme of Less and Sim­plic­i­tym with regards to dis­trac­tion and focus. Some great reading. focus.  Read More

Minimal Mac Menubar

I have been work­ing hard on push­ing my desk­top zen approach to an even greater min­i­mal­ist level. I have recently stripped my menubar of all unnec­es­sary and dis­tract­ing ele­ments, in the hope of hav­ing a cleaner com­puter envi­ron­ment. I have had this con­fig­ured now for about a week and I absolutely love it. I removed two very dis­tract­ing ele­ments from the menubar: the clock and the bat­tery mon­i­tor. No longer hav­ing those stare at... Read More

The Minimalist Principle: Omit Needless Things

Link.  Read More