Working On Your Mac Without Distractions In Monk Mode

If you want to focus on a single task to get as much work done as possible, you can use a variety of techniques on your Mac to help.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you ways to focus on a single task while working on your Mac. 
I talk a lot about multitasking. Being able to have multiple apps open and move between them. But sometimes you want to focus on your work in just one app. Sometimes this is referred to as Monk Mode. Like a monk sitting on top of a mountain just focusing on a single thought. This works better for some computing tasks than others. For instance if you're writing it can often be good to just be writing and have nothing else going on on your Mac. But it can also work for things like illustrating or working with graphics, for a music production, for video editing, and for coding. So you've got to think about whether the task you're doing works best if you're only doing it or whether you do need a lot of apps open in order to do the work. 
The most obvious thing you probably want to do is only have a single app open. So you don't want your screen looking like this with lots of different windows. You don't even want to use desktops with multiple spaces. If you really want to focus on a single task you want to Quit all of the other apps except what you're working on. So this looks pretty good so far. But what you might want to do is take this one window into full screen mode. Before you do that go into System Settings and then go to Control Center  and then at the bottom you can set Automatically Hide & Show the Menu Bar to either Always or In Full Screen Only. That way when you go to full screen mode the menu bar won't be shown unless you move the pointer to the top of the screen. Also, in Desktop & Dock you have a setting for Automatically Hide & Show the Dock. Make sure that is turned On. You can see the Dock is invisible here but if I had this turned Off then it is always there so you have all those other apps just ready to be launched. So turn that On and now when you click on the Green Button here to take it to full screen mode notice I'm not distracted by the Menu Bar or the Dock at the bottom. But both are still there. If I go to the top, like that, with my pointer the Menu Bar appears and if I go to the bottom you can see the Dock appears as well. So you have all the functionality but the screen looks a lot cleaner. 
You can also do things in certain apps. For instance here in Pages I can click here to turn off the Format Sidebar so I no longer see that and I can even go into View and then at the bottom I can choose Hide Toolbar. I've got the Ruler shown here so I'll Hide Ruler as well. So you can see now how I just have the words. I can just focus on those. 
Also another thing that helps is to only have one display. Most Mac users use just a single display. But if you do happen to have multiple displays, like I do on my desk, I would only use the one display that is right in front of me, turning the other screen off. 
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So next make sure you minimize distractions while working on your Mac which means turning off Notifications. So if you go into System Settings here you have Focus. This is where you have Do Not Disturb. But with Do Not Disturb you may have allowed some people to be able to contact you or set Intelligent Breakthrough & Silencing. You may even have some filters here at the bottom to allow some email accounts to show you Notifications and things like that. If that is the case what you want to do is create an another Focus Mode. Make this one the Ultimate Distraction Free Focus. So I'll create a custom one here called Monk Mode and for this one I just want to leave everything at the default. No Allowed People, No Allowed Apps, No Intelligent Breakthrough here. and no Filters. So now when I go to Control Center and then I go to Focus I can switch to Monk Mode and know that is what I'll get. You can also go one step further and then simply turn off Wi-Fi. If you turn off Wi-Fi of course you're not going to get notifications, you're not going to get emails, you're not going to get messages, or anything like that on your Mac. If you do this you may also want to set your iPhone to Airplane Mode, turning On the Focus mode here should turn on the same Focus Mode for your iPhone. So if you really want to make sure you can't be distracted then you want to turn Wi-Fi off on your Mac and set your iPhone to Airplane Mode. 
To go further than that you really need a MacBook. If you have a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro it is portable which means you can get away from your desk. Now this can be as simple as moving to another location, like a chair or sofa in your workspace. Or perhaps if you work from home moving to another room or to your backyard or to your balcony. If you want to get out and away from any distractions you may have at home or in the office you can, of course, go to a place like a café or perhaps a library. A lot of libraries actually have  individual little rooms that you can signup for so you don't even get the distractions of other things going on in the building. Other good options are taking your MacBook to a park if it is a nice day or going to a museum. A lot of museums have very quiet corners or even working areas that you can be in. Like they have little library rooms and such. Memberships to museums can be a lot cheaper than say a coworking space which is also a good option. 
Now to go further I'm going to use writing as an example but you can do similar things with graphics, video editing, and such. If you're writing try not to worry too much about things like Styling and Formatting. Just get the words down. If you want instead of using an app like Pages, you can use something like TextEdit. TextEdit also has a Rich Text Mode with all of these controls at the top. But you can set it to Plain Text Mode and you get none of that. You can still set the Font size. I'll go to Format, Font and I'll make the font a little bit bigger. I can just use the keyboard shortcut for that. But it's actually not changing the file at all. It is just that the display size for the font. So you can make it nice and big and easy to read. I can set this to full screen as well. You can see there are really no distractions here. It is just me typing words. I can't format it even if I wanted to which might help me get a lot of words written and then I can worry about formatting later on. 
If you want to go even more extreme you can use TextEditor in Terminal. So, for instance, you can use the PICO TextEditor just by typing PICO and Return and this is a very simple text editor with commands shown at the bottom here and it is real easy to pick up and learn even if you've never typed in Terminal. This is great because you don't use the mouse or trackpad at all. It's all just keyboard here. 
Another option is vi but I would only recommend that if you have used vi before and have liked it. Otherwise it is a steep learning curve. It is very different than what you're used to with modern word processors. 
EMacs is also a favorite of a lot of people. But it doesn't come preinstalled on your Mac so you're going to have to figure out how to get it on your Mac first if you really want to use EMacs. 
But with any of these you can go full screen, like this, and you can use Command and then Plus to increase the font size in Terminal and then it really kind of feels like you're using a Terminal back like in the 1960's. You can even go to Terminal, Settings and then Profiles. Then you can use these different profiles here to create all sorts of different looks. So, for instance, I can create this green background look right here and it won't change the current window. But if I open up a new window it will use that. Or I can actually choose one of these, right here like this one, and then I get a window that's like that. So I can go Full Screen here. I can type PICO. I can use Command Plus to make the text bigger, and I can write using this. The result when I save it, by the way, is going to be just a regular text file. So then I can open it up in TextEdit or Pages to continue working with it later on. 
Another thing you may want to consider doing is creating a second user account. In System Settings you can go to Users & Groups and you can create a new User. The idea here is that it is like a completely separate Mac. You don't even have to be signed into an iCloud account. It is just this account with an empty documents folder, an empty desktop folder. You can switch over to it and you won't be interrupted by your emails, by your messages, by all the other files and things you can be working on. To Save the file you can save it into your Shared Folder here. That way your regular user account can get access to it and you can continue working with it. 
This is also a good reason to keep an old Mac around especially if it is a MacBook. Long after you've moved onto your newer Mac you can take this older MacBook. You can wipe it and make it a Monk Mode machine where all you can do is write on it or whatever other work you're doing and it is separate from everything else. You can take it away from your desk and just focus on that one task and then use airdrop to send the file to your regular Mac later on. If you want to go really extreme, if you happen to have an Apple Vision Pro it's great for Monk Mode. I find when I put this on it is kind of like putting on horse blinders I feel like concentrating on my task and getting work done. Anything else, especially involving getting up from my desk, means probably taking this off and it is a few steps to get back into viewing my Mac Screen so I tend to focus on my task more intently when I'm actually using the Apple Vision Pro. 
Now let's take a step back and instead of subtracting things let's add some thing. Like, let's say you do need to work with some other things. Like maybe you're doing some writing and you have some research. Consider doing things like saving webpages to a format that you can access off-line. Like, for instance, I need this webpage here I can go to File, and Export it as a pdf or if you want you can just Save As and then use Web Archive to be able to access it that way. Save a folder full of documents that you may need or if you're working, say, doing some video editing you may want to put all of the clips and all the images you need gathered together in one folder. Basically split your work up. Do everything you need to do while you're online and have access to multiple apps. Gather everything together. Then go into Monk Mode and just have that one app but have all of the things you need for research or content available in one place. 
Another thing you may want to add back is something to cancel out the noise around you. You may, for instance, decide you do want to have a second app running and that second app is Music. A lot of people, including myself, find that they can focus better when they are listening to music. If you're using streaming music, like Apple Music, you have the ability to actually download an album or playlist so you can listen to it off-line. But also on your Mac if you go into System Settings and then you go to Accessibility and then to Audio you've got Background sounds. You can turn this on and choose from a list of background sounds here. It is kind of like some white noise and you can have that playing through noise canceling headphones or AirPods. 
So if you really need to get work done and the work you're doing is appropriate for it try using Monk Mode on your Mac by eliminating everything you possibly can except what you need to actually work on. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Comments: One Response to “Working On Your Mac Without Distractions In Monk Mode”

Sheldon
3 days ago
Thanks bunches
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