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Nowadays everyone’s attention spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter. I don’t know about you, but I can easily get distracted from the current design task in hand with the likes of Twitter, Skype or over checking my email. While I always meet deadlines, I know I should be able to free up much more time to work on my personal design projects.
I recently discovered this great little Mac app called Concentrate $29 (free trial available). Concentrate let’s you set a set of actions such as closing your email, Tweetdeck, Facebook etc and won’t let you open them for whatever period you set (of course you can override if you really need to). It will also allow you to set applications to open at a certain time. Concentrate lets you set a literal time of Up to an hour or can just be set to indefinite, meaning you tell it you are done she you finish your task.
I started using Concentrate and set myself an hour to concentrate on my current design task and was shocked to find that without thinking I tried to check my emails twice during that time, which of course Concentrate didn’t allow. It’s strange how much we become unaware of the things we do that all waste time without even realising we are doing it.
Find out more at www. getconcentrating.com/
Concentrate alternatives For PC
I haven’t tried them but here are a couple of suggestions if you are on PC
Cold Turkey – free for pc
Freedom which makes you reboot if you want to stop prior to the time
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7 Comments
What a great idea!
A friend of mine recently wrote a little AppleScript for me, which does something similar, it’s so helpful to be made to concentrate: I get better results and get things done faster.
This looks useful, Tara. I’ve been using a Firefox extension to block sites like Reddit, but unblocking them is a pain. I think I’ll try this so that I can have work and play periods.
This seems brilliant. Hope they have a simialr version for PC.
My first thought when I read the headline was “It needs to block facebook”!
I recall a friend’s post recently “There’s social networking and then there’s wasting your life.”
I have a post-it note stuck to the bottom of my monitor that says “no facebook” but it doesn’t really work any more, I might need the app…..
Hi Lex
It does stop you using facebook. You can actually personalise it so it does what you want – opens, closes or blocks certain programs which is really useful.
Hi Daniel, Its definitely worth a look.
Nothing can distract you When your goal is infront of you.