Sometimes the best productivity hacks come from pure accident and desperation.
Just over 12 months ago, I did something spectacularly stupid.
Closed my MacBook lid down on the charger cable. You know that satisfying click when the laptop shuts? Yeah, that turned into an expensive crunch as the screen cracked like a spider web.
Fuck.
So there I am, staring at my dead MacBook, knowing I need to keep writing but refusing to drop another two grand on a replacement.
I grab this shitty Samsung laptop from Amazon.
You just know it’s gonna be ass but hey. I’ll wait for the new M chips to land before grabbing a new MacBook.
I decide this piece of plastic garbage is going to have one job and one job only: writing. No social media. No YouTube. No seventeen browser tabs full of “research” that’s really just procrastination in disguise.
Then I do something that sounds completely insane.
I set the entire display to black and white.
No colours. No visual candy. No bright red notification badges screaming for attention.
Just words on a monochrome screen.
And holy shit, my writing productivity exploded.
Could be placebo.
Could be the fact that this laptop runs so slow that opening Chrome would probably cause it to have its own existential crisis.
Could be that black and white makes everything look serious and focused.
Don’t know. Don’t care.
What I know is that when your screen looks like a typewriter from 1952.
You stop getting distracted by shiny objects and start focusing on the only thing that matters.
Which believe it or not, as a writer means putting words on the page or a really shitty quality screen.
Just text. Black text on white background. Like writing was meant to be.
Your brain stops looking for visual entertainment and starts looking for intellectual engagement.
The quality of my copy has gone up because I’m not constantly context switching between writing and whatever dopamine hit is waiting in the next tab.
Try it. Set your laptop or phone to grayscale mode for a week. Watch how much less appealing everything becomes when it’s not designed to hijack your attention with colours that trigger your primitive lizard brain.
You might write better. You might focus longer. You might actually finish the thing you started instead of getting lost in a Wikipedia rabbit hole about 18th century farming techniques or underwater basket weaving.
Or you might think I’m completely full of shit.
Either way, let me know how it goes.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. If you curious about how horrible the writing horse is. This is it right here.