Kill Your GUI
If you're distracted
Has it ever happened to you that you took your phone or laptop to accomplish some task & the currently opened windows put you in an unproductive blackhole?
GUIs are a mess full of recall value sans priority. The thing is we only perform better if we focus on one task at a time & GUI suggests you (subconsciously) many tasks.
Initially, I made another workspace in my Macbook but then it got just as cluttered and eventually I figured out it was the GUIs fault.
The colours are too shiny & the notifications + tabs tell you again & again that you could be doing more or better things.
I don’t use a task manager app when I want to focus because of too many colours & it’s too suggestive.
This distraction is mentioned in the book Deep Work as “Context Switch” and the effect of this is called “Attention Residue”. Both of which are associated with Shallow work.
So, I’ve made a rule now. Whenever I want to focus, I move away from GUI to CLI.
The best thing about CLI is nothing happens until I do it. There’s no suggestion but only wait for my instructions.