A Quieter Desk
People ask what I use, hoping for a list of apps. The honest answer is that the setup matters far less than the subtractions.
My desk has one job at a time on it. Not one app — one job. When I'm writing, the writing is the only thing that can reach me. Everything else waits in a drawer, literal or digital. This is less about discipline than about design: I've arranged things so that the easy path and the right path are the same path.
Living in Hong Kong helps here, in a backhanded way. My desk is in the corner of the living room, three steps from the kitchen, with no door to close. In a small flat, empty space is the most expensive thing you own — every object you put down spends something genuinely scarce. It forces you to keep only what you actually want to keep.
A few principles I keep returning to:
Make the default action the one you'd choose on your best day. Willpower is a poor and expensive substitute for a good default.
Prefer tools that end. A book ends. A page ends. An infinite feed is a decision to never be finished, made on your behalf.
Leave the room emptier than feels necessary. Attention needs somewhere to go, and clutter — physical or informational — is just a lot of small somewhere-elses.
None of this is a system. Systems are another thing to maintain. It's closer to a habit of removing, practised often enough that the room, and the mind, stay mostly clear.
Back to writing