Top 10 ways to instantly DEcrease productivity on your Mac
Sure, we’ve all read those lists of tweaks you can make to your system to increase productivity, but what if you’re not in such an all-fired hurry to get things done? What if you’re already plenty efficient, and actually need to slow things down a bit until that five o’clock whistle blows? Well, lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten best ways to slow down your system, and decrease productivity. Please feel free to add your favorites in the comments. (Oh, and we by no means recommend you do any of these to your friends’ computers, even if it IS April 1st).
#1 Use Terminal to do everything
Sure, you could you OS X’s beautiful GUI to click on things …like a girl, but why bother when you can tap the super powerful UNIX underpinnings?
For example, why use cmnd+option+shift+delete to empty the trash, when you can simply fire up Terminal and type:
sudo -s
Enter Admin password , hit,
rm -R .Trash
Much better.
#2 Set every folder to open in a new window, and make new windows open in horrible locations.
In the Finder’s Prefs, check the box marked “Always open folders in a new window”. This will causes your desktop to become overrun with open Finder windows in no time, making it really hard to find things. While you’re in the Finder Prefs, also take a quick moment to set a new default location for where a newly opened Finder window will open to. I suggest a horrible location nested deep within many other folders. For example, here I have mine set to the “Jump To HTML Editor” folder, found in Macintosh HD > Applications > Adobe Photoshop > Helpers > Jump To HTML Editor. The perfect place to start if you want to waste some time navigating out of a deep folder hierarchy.
#3 Disable Spotlight
Open Spotlight’s System Prefs, and under the Privacy Tab, add all your hard drives. This way you won’t be tempted to rely on quickly searching for things.
#4 Set all windows to use icon view, with giant icons sorted by size, and set a photo for a background
Open a Finder Window in icon view and hit Command+J to bring up the options.
This does a number of things. First, Icon view requires the most scrolling of any view, and scrolling takes time. Add to that the “Sort by Size” option, and now your computer must calculate the size of each item in a folder as you open it. Not only does this take time, but it also means if you open a folder with many items, the icons will begin to move around and re-sort themselves as your computer decides who’s bigger than who, making it even more challenging to find the app or file you want.
Lastly, adding a busy photo to your window background makes reading the text that much more difficult, especially dark photos which tend to hide the folder type. As a final touch, I recommend setting the grid spacing to its highest setting, and set the name of each item to appear to the right of each item instead of underneath. This will cause the fewest items to be able to appear in a given window without scrolling.
Be sure to check “ALL WINDOWS” in Tiger or “USE AS DEFAULTS” in Leopard.
Forgot the number one way to slow down a Mac, run Windows on it…
T
The number one way to decrease productivity? Google Reader!
The sad thing is you know somewhere there’s a guy who actually IS using Terminal to do everything.
Where’d you get the hot chick in santa’s helper suit? I think the “busy photo” tip is definitely the best. Now where to find this busy photo…
I certainly fall into number 10 category. However, I often wait for my screen saver to really enjoy the eye candy.
Let’s not forget this:
http://www.thecleverest.com/rosetta.jpg
Absolute, best way to decrease your productivity on a Mac:
don’t uninstall the trial version of Office when you install Office!
How about splitting up blog posts into multiple pages so you have to click to the next page on relatively short articles? To waste even more time, do this on long articles.
I actually do use the terminal for everything. It’s why I love my mac, it being unix based and all. 😀
Are you my Dad? Because he’s been doing at least 7 of these since Mac Os 9.
Oh crap… I do two of those… (6 & 8)
I can explain though! I use the keyboard shortcuts for the different views… So I remove the buttons to leave space to add buttons for burning, appzapper, time machine &c.
On the screensaver… it’s an rss ticker (like on news shows) of all the blogs I read & a bunch of other things. Not really productivity enhancing, but it does stop me having to go to netnewswire all the time
Scott, that’s a shot from our Mac Chick of the Month December 2007, the lovely Morgan Kennedy.
https://macenstein.com/archives/967
-The Doc
HA! i see someone doesn’t work on their mac.
I actually use “open folders in new windows”
BUT i have my default set to paned view
, so i can navigate quickly, then double click a folder to get a new window for dragging items around.- a HUGE time save as opposed to springloaded folders or even stacks of folders in the dock.
i also sort by size(when in list view), But change the default button set on my windows to be the back, the path, views button, & the delete.
And i Actually keep spotlight OFF, the auto-index of every connected hard drive and lack of searching inside the system and app bundles make it fairly worthless as a search too for me. The ONLY time i NEED a search tool is in a search for a random system item thats nestled deep in core services, i keep everything else in it place.
I connect many different drives and other computers to mine , the performance hit when i connect a TB of firewire drives that have never been connected before(and Spotlight goes to town trying to index it)affects my workflow as well.
Rant ON* I still dont understand the need for such robust search tools on the desktop. i keep my Documents organized in folders. My email gets sorted by rules, i Finally bent and let itunes organize my music, and iPhoto handles my photos (albums by subject, a list by size, and a list by date).
Wny do i need anything more than a “Find file” with a little flexibility.(and with time machine , i’m not seeing the need for that, if i can remember where i saw it at any given time , i can find it)
My last major complaint about spotlight is the litter it leaves behind on NON-mac hard drives, i connect to my linux share , spotlight leaves junk there, to my windos shared files , whaddya know , junk there. *RANT off
Yes, Spotlight Bad. i said it, noone else ever will.