Going Fullscreen
I read an infinite amount of articles about productivity, and I try very hard to try out most of them. But a lot of the time my attempts to try stuff out last a few days, or a few weeks at most. Eventually I get distracted, or I don’t really feel it works and I’m actually just doing it for the sake of doing it.
Yesterday I tried something of my own accord. I’ve read a lot about single tasking, how people go through various methods to limit their focus to only one task. I’ve never been good at this, and I’ve never tried to be good at this. Until yesterday I tried something, I was writing an article, and just made my web browser full screen. Just to focus on writing. In about 2 hours I wrote 2000 words. Amazing! I think they were pretty good too. That is way more productive than I ever am, I find it hard to focus on something so intensely for so long. At least on a regular basis. But here I am, the next day, full screen again and writing away. It seems obvious, if you clear away the other stuff you won’t get distracted. Most of you are probably guilty of the same thing, I’ll close all my windows and everything and focus, five minutes later I’m on my emails because on popped up. Or I’ve remember something I need to add to my calendar, or there’s a song I want to find a particlar live performance of. All super important tasks of course. Fullscreen is a focusing system that has so far prevented all that.
Did it again for the photo above. Took some pictures, and they needed editing so I could share them. So I imported them, turned everything else off and focused on one photo at a time, not worrying about the batch or anything else that normally distracts me or slow me down. Then that afternoon I got asked to put together some clips from a short film I recently shot and edited. I’ll be honest, I was playing Fallout at the time and wasn’t in an editing mode, but I knew that it was a quick job and I needed to do it soon. Again, I loaded up Final Cut, set it fullscreen and churned through the edit in half an hour. So much easier!
My advice for you, is to try it. Don’t set a deadline, or a routine or schedule or anything that forces a target out of you. If you have something you need to do, set your program to fullscreen and see how far you get. You never know what might work!
