The human eye is extremely sensitive to changes in the visual field – especially in the periphery. The OS X Finder places quite a few distractions – changing things unrelated to the task at hand – in the edges of the screen.
Let’s eliminate them.
Start by opening up System Preferences:
Dock: Check "Automatically hide and show the Dock"
This will hide any dock-icon based indicators (unread mail, etc).
Bluetooth > Settings: Uncheck "Show Bluetooth status in the menu bar"
This keeps any change in your Bluetooth status from distracting you.
Energy Saver > Options: Uncheck "Show battery status in the menu bar"
This keeps the changing battery indicator from distracting you.
Sound > Options: Uncheck "Show volume in the menu bar"
The indicator that shows up when you change the volume is so much better.
Date & Time > Clock: Uncheck "Show the date and time"
It was the changing clock that started me on this quest to eliminate distractions. My replacement – the world clock Dashboard Widget.
Now open up Internet Connect, select AirPort and Uncheck
"Show AirPort status in menu bar"
This keeps changes in the wifi signal from distracting you (you’ll probably feel it in the page loads if something happens, to verify an issue, open up Internet Connect).
Tomorrow, we’ll go through some other apps. Until then Command + H.
Hmm…I’m going to have to disagree with you on some of these.
Hiding the Dock distracts me whenever I mouse near it. It pops up and annoys me. (I hate the Dock so it’d be another story if I could *really* hide it). My solution is to remove everything I can from my Dock and use Quicksilver to launch programs.
My solution for email and chat indicators is to quit those programs when I really don’t want any distractions.
Luke, I’d also like to be able to remove the dock completely (‘quit’ ?). The Command+Tab and Quicksilver combo perform the same function far more productively.
If you powerwankers would just stick to desktop-based, land line systems like God intended, you wouldn’t have to deal with these dinky monitor issues.
For those wanting to permanently hide the dock, take a look at http://theappleblog.com/community/applications/542-permanently-hide-dock/
Haven’t tried it myself, but looks like what you’re wanting… 🙂
Jessica