Yeah I was nodding along with that, and the whole article, really. Explains why I volunteered for first aider.
However, I'm not sure if his one neat trick of mono-tasking is enough to overcome my own particular version of this malody. Just now, after reading this, I thought, why don't I try this monotasking thing right now. And my first task will be to rearrange my KDE desktop to support this more linear mode. Instead of having multiple projects spread out across many desktops and activities, I might go back to one desktop with two windows. I can have the main project IDE open on the left and use tdrop to turn all other apps into dropdowns that shuffle in and out, one at a time, on the right side. I'd press a button and the terminal would be replaced by web browser. Press another and the browser is replaced by the file manager, and so on. Now, wouldn't it be great if the file manager, when it drops down, defaulted to the current project directory, instead of always the same home directory? Yeah! So, I'll need to probably set up an Activity per Project and name it as the project. Then I can run a script on activity change that sets the file managers default directory to the project. Then again, I think, I already have access to the files through the IDE, and home much of my file manager time do I really spend in the project dir, Vs my Documents, Apps, Downloads, Scripts, Books and Media dirs? I guess I should set up a hotkey for each of my main destinations, then I can go to any of those destinations with one command, and reduce the opportunities for distraction. But, which hotkey system to use, the one built in to KDE Plasma? Or, the one in my Stream Deck, or xdotool, or sxhkd, or even break out the big guns with autokey?
Any idea I have leads to a combinatorial explosion of new ideas. And one of those new ideas eventually and inevitably feels a hundred times more important and more urgent than the original idea that spawned it.
So, when I try this monotasking, I think it may work for a while, but without fail it will break down when I'm in the middle of a mono-task and suddenly become convinced that the new idea I have will actually make this current task irrelevant, or so much easier to complete using the new tool I just invented in my head, that it would feel crazy NOT to abandon this task and switch to the new one.
However, I'm not sure if his one neat trick of mono-tasking is enough to overcome my own particular version of this malody. Just now, after reading this, I thought, why don't I try this monotasking thing right now. And my first task will be to rearrange my KDE desktop to support this more linear mode. Instead of having multiple projects spread out across many desktops and activities, I might go back to one desktop with two windows. I can have the main project IDE open on the left and use tdrop to turn all other apps into dropdowns that shuffle in and out, one at a time, on the right side. I'd press a button and the terminal would be replaced by web browser. Press another and the browser is replaced by the file manager, and so on. Now, wouldn't it be great if the file manager, when it drops down, defaulted to the current project directory, instead of always the same home directory? Yeah! So, I'll need to probably set up an Activity per Project and name it as the project. Then I can run a script on activity change that sets the file managers default directory to the project. Then again, I think, I already have access to the files through the IDE, and home much of my file manager time do I really spend in the project dir, Vs my Documents, Apps, Downloads, Scripts, Books and Media dirs? I guess I should set up a hotkey for each of my main destinations, then I can go to any of those destinations with one command, and reduce the opportunities for distraction. But, which hotkey system to use, the one built in to KDE Plasma? Or, the one in my Stream Deck, or xdotool, or sxhkd, or even break out the big guns with autokey?
Any idea I have leads to a combinatorial explosion of new ideas. And one of those new ideas eventually and inevitably feels a hundred times more important and more urgent than the original idea that spawned it.
So, when I try this monotasking, I think it may work for a while, but without fail it will break down when I'm in the middle of a mono-task and suddenly become convinced that the new idea I have will actually make this current task irrelevant, or so much easier to complete using the new tool I just invented in my head, that it would feel crazy NOT to abandon this task and switch to the new one.