My ability to concentrate on the task at hand has been deteriorating for some time now (which should be obvious if you only read the title of this site.) I grew into a bad habit of idle web surfing, which can easily masquerade as productivity (especially if I’m surfing around web design sites, freelance sites, productivity sites, in the interest of research… ) but of course it’s really not.

Trying to reverse this trend, awhile back I moved my “office” out of my bedroom and into our den. Our family PC is in here as well, and the room is doorless, opening out to our dining room and the rest of the house. The counter-intuitive idea was that real life going on around me would pull me away from online distractions, and I’d be forced to focus more when I actually sit down to work. The lack of a door has been an issue at times, especially when I need to talk on the phone, but all things considered this has worked out pretty well. I’m also feeling less isolated.

I have a chunk of time when the rest of the family is at work/school to get the concentration heavy stuff done, and because I know this time is limited I’m less likely to wander off into “research” that doesn’t directly have anything to do with the task at hand.

So things are better, but could be better still. And as I’ve thought about this I’ve realized that I’m routinely pulling my brain off the rails by glancing over to my left. To my left is a second monitor. I’ve been using two monitors for over three years now, beginning when I replaced my PC with a MacBook and attached it to a full size monitor. The idea, of course, is that I can have more screen real estate for all the visual elements I’m working with. But when I really, really think about it, the second screen rarely serves a purpose other than “home for Tweetdeck.” When I glance to my left, it’s to read up on Twitter.

Now, some (you?) may say just don’t run Tweetdeck all day. Yes, that could be a solution, but I do get great value from Twitter so I’m simply not willing to take such a drastic step (you could say if not for Twitter I wouldn’t be in business.)

So instead I’m going to try going back to one monitor. My current computer is a 24″ iMac so it’s not like I’ll be suffering for screen space. That plus using the Spaces feature which in effect gives me as many monitors as I could possibly want means I won’t really be downgrading. I’ll run twitter on a hidden Space, get the benefits of having it run all day, but not be so easily distracted by it as I am when it’s always there, to my left.

It’s another little change that could hopefully have a big impact. And my second monitor already has a new purpose, to replace the just-died one that was attached to my old MacBook, which is being used as a second family machine. Happy solution all around, I hope!