3 Effective Ways to Keep You Focused as a Creator

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 18:04:08 +0000

Away with the Phone!

Put your phone away. Far away.

Not in your pocket.

Not on your desk.

In a drawer – away from you.

Disconnect.

You should be able to tell if you’ve got an emergency call coming in, but past that, aim to be completely oblivious to every other kind of notification flowing into your smart device.

If you use a time management technique like Pomodoro (there are plenty of timers and apps in the app store to keep you on track with this strategy), you get 5 minutes every half hour to pause from making awesome stuff. Use that time to get up, stretch, and, if you must, check your phone.

Being able to easily reach my phone is a huge, huge productivity killer.

I’ve started putting it in a drawer with the ringer on at a reasonable volume level so as not to miss an emergency. Life has been much more productive since.

Music to Code By

Putting your phone away minimizes physical distractions from your environment.

Music to Code By minimizes mental distractions and keeps you focused.

Don’t be mislead by the title. It’s not just for programmers!

If you need to write, organize, or just think in general, I highly recommend this invaluable resource.

The problem I always have with music when it comes to productivity is that…

The music has words and I wanna sing! (sorry, teammates)
The music is too mellow and causes me to want to sleep.
The music is too up-beat or interesting… interesting enough to distract me.

Music to Code By is literally the Goldilocks of music for concentration purposes. No words. Not too slow. Not too fast or “interesting”. Just right.

I bought the original 3 tracks, and it’s been the best $18 I’ve spent to improve my focus.

I know what you’re thinking: I have to spend money??!

Well, you’d spend money to buy a hammer or a saw if you needed to build something, wouldn’t you?

You’d drop a few dollars on an app if you knew it’d be worth it for the job you needed it to do, right?

Think of Music to Code By as a tool for your brain’s focus… a “clamp” if you will, to keep you riveted on what you need to accomplish.

If you can’t afford $20 right now, can you afford $10? Save for two months and then buy it!

I haven’t encountered any other tool apart from these sound tracks that I can spend dollars on that keeps me focused.

Full disclosure: No one paid me to say all that. I’ve really just been that impacted by the product that I couldn’t keep from commending it to you.

Keep a Text Editor Window Open (but minimized)

Whenever a distracting thought comes to mind, open the text editor and jot down the thought.

“Oh! I’ve got to remember to call ___”…

Open Text editor window –>
Type “I’ve got to call ___” –>
Minimize –>
Back to making great things!

“Blog post idea!”…

Open Text editor window –>
Type “[Blog post idea]” –>
Minimize –>
Continue that awesome project!

Always have a text editor window open and ready to record whatever your random ramblings may be. Your mind can effectively “let go” because you just preserved what it alerted you to in the text file.

Don’t keep the window on the screen all the time though. You’ll be tempted to glance over at it too often. Jot down the thought and then minimize it.

Oh. And be sure to save the file. :]

What do you do?

These are my top three right now. What do you do to keep focused on what matters?

Sound off in the comments – I’d love to hear your productivity hacks!

Create Sound Clips from iTunes

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:48:38 +0000

Open iTunes.
(optional) Import any songs you’d like to make clips for.
Select (click) the song that you’d like a sound clip for so that it’s the only one selected.
Right-click that song and select “Get Info”.
A window will appear – Click “Options” to access the screen to set your start and stop times.
Check the boxes next to “Start Time” and “Stop Time”.
Enter a start time in the text box next to “Start Time”.
Enter a stop time in the text box next to “End Time”.
Click “OK” to make that change to the song effective.
Right-click that song again and select “Create AAC Version”.
In the iTunes song list, you will now see two identically named songs. The key differentiator between the two is the length of time the song is. The sound clip you created will be less than or equal to the full-length song that it came from, but probably just less than if you truly created a sound clip.
One last time, right-click the original song (the longer one), select “Get Info”, click “Options”, and uncheck the “Start Time” and “Stop Time” check boxes. If you don’t do this, the song will only play the timespan you specified every time you play it in iTunes.
(optional) Rename the sound clip with an appropriate clip name.
- Right-click the sound clip and click “Get Info”.
- Click the “Info” button this time to access the “Name” field.
- Type in an appropriate clip name in the “Name” field.
- Click “OK” to make that change effective.
(optional) If you don’t want the sound clip to appear in your iTunes library, you can move it to another folder and remove it from the library so that it’s not junking up your normal song list.
Right-click the sound clip.
- Click “Show in Finder”
- In my opinion it’s always easiest to get the file somewhere that’s easy to find and work with it from there. You can use the Desktop for this purpose if you’d like. In Finder, you can press and hold the Command key, click the sound clip, and drag it to Desktop on the left. The combo of Command+click+drag+let go on Desktop effectively moves it to that location.
- Close Finder so that you’re back on your iTunes window.
- Click the sound clip.
- Press the delete key and click “Delete Song” on the warning window. This will remove it from your iTunes library.