Work Distraction Free with Think
I run lots of apps simultaneously on my Mac, and while it’s great to be able to quickly switch tasks without waiting for an app to load up, having everything open everywhere can be a bit of a distraction. If you’re the same, check out Freeverse’s Think.
Think allows you to focus you attention with laser-like intensity on a single application by blackening everything else, including your desktop.
The app’s download page sums up its raison d’être nicely:
At this very moment, applications are fighting for your attention. Between chat windows, Finder windows, Web browser windows, and everything else, it’s amazing any of us can concentrate at all. As it has become easier to multitask, we’ve become more likely to have two dozen windows on the screen at any given moment. Innovations like Expose makes finding what you want in the sea of visual stimuli easier, but they’ve done little to remove those distractions.
Think’s control panel (left) lets you adjust the transparency of the backdrop overlaid on your background apps and desktop. (I immediately set mine to pitch black.) Via the ‘illumination panel,’ which looks entirely similar to OS X’s built in Cmd + tab application switcher, you choose which app you want in the foreground:
After you’ve selected which app to run in Think, you can also temporarily bring up others by choosing them from the dock or Cmd + tabbing to them in the app switcher. Hide the guest app and again you’re left with nothing but a single application and a black screen.
Think helps you focus on the task at hand, and in a sense extends full-screen mode to every window orientated app in your applications folder. Think is also handy for taking screenshots of aspects of individual windows, as it hides everything save for the foremost app.
