My eternal quest for maximising productivity has recently lead me in the direction of an interesting new application called DarkRoom. Some of you may have heard of this before, and will consider it ‘old news’, but I’m sure there are some readers out there who wouldn’t have heard of it and I feel it’s worth pointing out.

In short, DarkRoom is designed to do one thing; and that’s minimise distractions. It’s a simple text-editor which takes up your entire screen, covering everything incuding the toolbar and system tray, and leaves you with nothing but a blinking cursor. When you first fire it up you’ll find that it closely resembles Keanu Reeves’ computer screen at the start of The Matrix, and you might find yourself waiting for the message: Wake up Neo. When you see the colour-scheme you’ll know exactly what I mean (check out the screenshot).

If you in any way resemble the Average Joe as far as focus is concerned, anything from a blog post to a design document is tough to write up without being distracted. Those distractions might come in the form of email notifications, chat messages from friends, or a constant need to check what’s going on with your RSS feeds. If you’re stuck working on something that’s really boring, you may even find yourself looking for distractions to help you put it off. Regardless of the type or reason, distractions do nothing for productivity! DarkRoom helps with this by making sure that you can’t see them!

When I first read about this little application I wasn’t too excited about it. But I am the kind of person that will give little bits of software a go to see how well they perform, and determine whether or not they achieve their goal.

So here I am using DarkRoom for this blog post, and I have to admit that I really do like it. I’d usually use VIM for writing up my posts, or perhaps even the in-built editor for Wordpress, and so everything else on screen was totally visible, and I was susceptable to all manner of distractions. Since starting this post, I’ve not touched the browser, nor my RSS feeds, and I’m totally oblivious to any form of attempted contact via email or IM. It really does feel like I’m alone in a dark room, and I’m left to my own devices.

I like it. I really do like it. The feeling of it is really good, and it’s actually a bit of a relief to be away from the ‘busy-ness’ that is my normal desktop. However, there is something that I’d like to change. Being the geek that I am I’d love to use this for writing more than just blog posts, or anything that comes in raw text. It’d be nice to have syntax highlighting, and it’d be great to have the power my favourite editor (VIM) while using this application. In short what I’m saying is that if I could make VIM lock me away in the same manner that this DarkRoom application has, then I think I’d be extremely productive.

I spend a lot of time editing text, and there’s no way that this simple application is going to replace VIM for my everday text editor. I will, however, continue to use it for any form of ‘creative’ (keep your jokes to yourselves) writing that I might like to do. I feel like it gives me a focus that I don’t have when I can see everything else. I can easily resist the temptation to procrastinate when I don’t have all the notifications popping up in front of my face.

As I come to the conclusion of this post I can honestly recommend that this should be tried out. It’s very light on features, but it’s ideal for cranking out blog posts or any form of writing which requires a bit more focus. I sounds boring and unnecessary, but until you see it for yourself you won’t fully see its potential. Give it a spin and see how you like it.