Productivity tip: Be someone else
Computers are distraction devices. I don’t know about you, but at any one time, I can have more than 20 applications running. These include: two email programs; an RSS newsreader; one or two browsers; Word; an image editor; and a slew of other apps.
What this means is not that my computer runs slow - I have 1GB of memory so most times it’s fine - but that each of those programs is a potential distraction - especially the ones that talk to the internet.
So I set up a new user account on my computer and which doesn’t have any newsreader or email clients configured. When I find I should have my head down and tail up but am getting distracted, I switch to the other user (using “Fast User Switching” on the Mac, and Windows XP has the same sort of thing).
This gives me a nice clean distraction free environment where I can then work on assignments or whatever else I should be doing.
Give it a try if you have the same problem.
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Golly, I don’t think this tip would help me
When I am supposed to be tail up, chin down and into the work, the browser is all I need for distraction .. it’s one click away on any user account .. gee, even when I am logged in via secure shell, I sometimes fire up ‘lynx’ and do a bit of searching for docs or information, then end up reading stuff like this
.. and how (or why, more like it), would you run _two_ email programs?
Another handy hint is to actually exit programs you are not using, like image editors and the like
Basically you get the same effect doing so as switching account, yes? 8-} or do you lock down the secondary user account you use?
Hi Dave. I use two email progs coz 1) I wanted to test Thunderbird and 2) I have so many email accounts, I wanted to separate them. So all my blogging ones are in Thunderbird.
I don’t lock down the second account, but without email or a newsreader configured, it greatly reduces distraction.