Posted in: Uncategorized, By: E. Long, At: January 21st, 2008
In what amounts to a happiness level only really experienced with major life events like a new marriage, a new home, or a newborn baby — I am happy to display this rarely-seen screen when logging into my Google Reader account:
Posted in: Uncategorized, By: E. Long, At: January 17th, 2008
Prior to the holiday break in December, I took the opportunity to upgrade my work machine (MacBook Pro) to Mac OS X Leopard. In a corporate environment, I am probably viewed as “the guy with the shiny computer” but running Mac OS X + Windows XP is excellent. One particular feature in the new OS X Leopard is a feature called “spaces”:
Spaces is described as follows from the Apple website:
Use Spaces to group your application windows and banish clutter completely. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to switch between your spaces.
When I originally read about this functionality, I thought it looked interesting but wasn’t sure I would be a user of it. I’m a long-time Mac user and use several keyboard shortcuts and general “experienced user” wizardry to navigate my way through panes and panes of windows and applications simultaneously churning away on my MacBook. My initial thought was that “Spaces” would get in the way of my work.
Today however, I found myself doing two very distinct functions: office work (Outlook, Word, and Excel within Windows and IM and Safari web-browsing on the Mac-side — running both operating systems simultaneously) and web development work (BBEdit, Photoshop, Terminal, Interarchy/FTP, and fileserver access on the Mac-side, and Navicat access on the Windows side).
What a perfect way to divide my work up on my machine with Spaces:
What I’ve found thus far is when I’m working within a dedicated space, I focus my efforts 100% on those applications. When I hear an instant message chime or an e-mail arrive in my inbox, I am not distracted by the notification pop-ups and am able to continue with my development work — uninterrupted.
Multi-tasking can actually reduce productivy & effectiveness
Because my “work” applications are isolated in Space #1 and my “development” applications are in space #2, I have to consciously make a decision which area I’m in. The flip-side of the coin is keeping everything in a single space and multi-tasking your way to death. I was able to focus 100% on development for blocks of time and then 100% on e-mails/IMs for blocks of time…as opposed to fragmented IM conversations, limited e-mail attention span, and constantly losing my place in where I left off in my development tasks.
For me, Spaces isn’t about reducing clutter, it’s about keeping me focused on specific aspects of my work at one time.
Not being interrupted = increased productivity! What a concept!
