Revising my desktop

For quite some time I’ve managed my focus by blotting everything from my desktop except for the application I was using. I did this with a combination of two things; using Isolator to black everything out and by maximizing each application to take up the entire screen. This way of working was featured on Patrick Rhone’s Web site Minimal Mac (which I highly recommend).

Apple Spaces

Today, I decided to mix it up a bit using Apple’s Spaces. I realized that I never get to appreciate a tasteful background or the large, high resolution icon replacements designed by Martin Goneau that I use these days.

I have set up 12 different Spaces and assigned one application to each space. The big change for me is that they aren’t maximized. For many applications such as Mail and Evernote, this actually works out better because the e-mails and notes aren’t spread across so much space making it easier to read longer passages. This is why applications like Tofu for Mac exist; to make it easier on the eyes to read long passages quickly.

My new desktop—well, one of them—dressed on the right with icons designed by Martin Goneau.

For now, I’m using one of the desktop backgrounds that came with Snow Leopard, but I’ll probably track down a few of my own photos to cycle through as my desktop background. It is just as easy to focus with this desktop layout and a little more peaceful than BLACK.