The Mac tip from a few weeks ago was Easily distracted? Mac tools that keep you focused. This was an interesting tip to write because when you sit in front of the computer all day, it’s sometimes hard to quantify how much productive work you get done. Like now, updating my blog, for instance. =) If you’re in front of the computer for 14hrs a day, how many of those are productive hours? How many are wasted time?
One tool that I looked at was called Concentrate, which sets you up with a fully customizable “work session”. When I first saw Concentrate I thought it was kind of gimicky, but I’ve come to appreciate how it lets me, easily, shove stuff out of the way and only pull up the things I need. Having a timer handy ensures that I can work for a set amount of time and gives me a sense of actually concentrating and getting things done. The other is a web service called Rescue Time and it’s quite interesting to see the stats on yourself. My boss will be happy to know that this week I am in the top 16% of Rescue Time people, with an efficiency summary score of 1.12 vs the average of 0.4. That actually seems to be pretty consistent, which is somewhat scary (for the average person). It also shows me that the bulk of my time is spent in the Terminal each week (the highest used application). There is proof that I’m a CLI junkie.