Ever since I read Cap Newport’s book ‘Deep Work‘, I have been trying to find a simple productivity hack that could help me with starting my deep work journey. I highly recommend giving that book a read. Some of the concepts in the book really intrigued me. It also made me reflect on the kind of work I have been doing and if it can be categorized as ‘Deep Work’ or not. Turns out, the majority of the work I do throughout the day does not fall in this category albeit a few activities.
Productivity is a topic I am very interested in. And I have been reading a lot about it lately. Some of the recent books I have read around this topic and I recommend are –
And I started including a few learnings from these books in my workflow. I have experimented with different techniques, flows, and tools. I will share a few of them in my productivity section of the blog. But today I want to share a simple hack I have been trying the past week.
Let’s back up a little. Inspired by Cal’s book on Deep work, I booked 3 hour daily slots in my calendar. I also dragged my team along in this experiment. These 3 hours are meant for pure deep work with no meetings, no IMs, and no distractions. Here is where I didn’t think it through – even if I was in a deep work mode, the rest of the world wasn’t. Sure, with my calendar booked, no body else scheduled any meetings during the time. But I still got emails, IMs and calls.
Nobody asks me to answer those emails right away or to reply to their messages instantly. But it is hard to kill the habit of checking emails and IMs regularly. Especially when you are in a leadership position and there are a lot of people reaching out. And, the most annoying feature in this scenario is the ‘unread count’ badges on the apps. It is a distracting world out there. I could turn off notifications. But it is a lot of work. Turning all the notifications off for each application for a few hours and then turning them on again. Sure, I could automate that. But I am too lazy to do that.
So I did something very simple. I hid the bottom dock and the top menu bar. If you are a windows user, I am sure there will be something similar. I am using a Mac and the setting is under System Preferences > Dock and Menu bar and select – ‘Automatically hide and show the dock/menu bar’
Pros of using this productivity hack –
- Helps me focus on the current task at hand – This is the obvious one. For me, just like notifications, the unread badges are just as distracting. And when the dock and menu bar is hidden, those distracting badges vanish as well.
- Gives me real estate I didn’t think I needed. With the top and bottom real-estate now available for me to expand the apps that I am working on, I can see more. Literally. Although it is only a few centimeters but every inch counts!
- Saves me time from needlessly switching apps. This is a habit I have been meaning to kill. When the mind wanders, I tend to switch applications. Maybe take a peek at my emails or start a new IM thread altogether. I have noticed I am doing less of that now that I don’t see the app icons anymore.
- Lets me work on multiple apps together. I could easily remove the dock and menu by making an app full screen. The problem though is I can’t have 2 apps open side by side in that mode which I can do with this approach. And most of my workflow demands me to have 2 or more apps open at the same time.
Cons of using this hack –
- Miss urgent notifications. This is a tricky one. I believe in an asynchronous working environment, and I would expect you would set up a one-on-one call if there is something you need an answer to at that instant. Emails and messages are in essence not urgent. But if an urgent question pops up, the first instinct of people is to send a message. I haven’t missed any urgent messages yet because I haven’t turned off notifications, but I am guessing this will happen at some point.
- Show/hide of the dock and menu bar is time-consuming. It does take like an extra second to unhide the dock and menu which can compound over time and get on your nerves to completely ditch this idea.
Conclusion –
I haven’t used this productivity hack long enough. It has only been a few days now and I found it really useful during my deep work hours but really irritating during the rest of the day. But it was a good experiment that brought forward the psychology of unread badges and how it has made me spend extra hours that I could have potentially saved.
PS – I am aware that I can make any application I am working on full screen without having to go through this pain. But I usually tend to work on 2-3 apps at the same time. Maybe I am referring to an excel sheet while making a ppt or I am finding code to copy-paste from my browser to my IDE. And I don’t like the experience where it feels like I am swiping through desktops. That is just my personal preference and you could totally take that route.
PPS – Do drop a comment below if you found this productivity hack useful and if you have found any hacks I would love to try them out! Don’t forget to hit the bell icon to get notifications every time I publish a new post. See you in the next one!
