Aside from email (which I hate) there are two things that really distract me while I work on my Mac during the day: Tweetie and Things / OmniFocus. Before the iPad (Bi) I used to have Tweetie open on one screen and my task management app of choice open on another. Between those two apps I would spend a stupid amount of time organizing tasks and changing due dates, and reading tweets and replies.
A few weeks ago I thought this was all a waste and that there had to be a better way of dealing with these distractions. Keeping them on their own space was not good enough – I had to remove them from my Mac. The answer was of course the loyal iPad sitting in its lovely stand next to my computer.
Now I check Twitter during the work day on it with Twitterific and review my tasks on it as well. I keep the task management app open on my Mac, but the window closed, so that I can quickly enter a new task, but I never actually mark off tasks on my Mac. Same goes for Twitter, Tweetie stays open so that I can tweet quickly if I desire, and so that if someone DM’s me I can see it via Growl, but I never read through the stream on my Mac.
All of this means that I check Twitter once or twice and hour instead of every 15 minutes and that I only look at tasks when I need a new one. The best part is that the iPad screen turns off automatically after a bit so I really can’t be distracted.
Hello focus, welcome back.