The Log

When I published my post titled, “Dear Mr. Jobs” last week, I heard a couple of comments about my “cluttered” menubar. It got me thinking about the current move towards minimalism and simplicity in regards to our digital tools. It’s a movement that I’m greatly in favour of. It has been wonderful to see a work like Patrick’s Minimal Mac receive so much attention and success.

But at times, I wonder if it isn’t just the next fad. It’s certainly partly a backlash to the personal productivity movement, with GTD at the centre. But maybe it’s also the new GTD. Instead of doing work, people are still tinkering. But now they do so under the guise of ‘reducing’ or ‘simplifying’. But in the end, it’s the same issue. The boring tasks that you need to do are still on your list. But we have a whole new generation of singly focused, minimalistic tools that tempt us to switch from whatever we’re using now.

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I love what Patrick and others are doing: helping people focus on what is needed and avoiding what they don’t. But the whole genre is vulnerable to going down the same path that personal productivity did.

And so, back to the comments that were made about my menubar. Cluttered? Only if I didn’t use the items that reside therein. Which I do.

I prefer, when possible, to keep an item in my menubar rather than in the Dock. I prefer a tool in my menubar over a Dashboard widget. Why? Because it suits my preferences and fits my workflow.

I’m fairly sure I could lose 2 days of work looking for ways to configure those tools to be accessed in some other fashion. But why? Just so I can post screenshots that will cause others to say, “This guy is so zen. He’s must be in the zone all. the. time!”

Minimalism in computing is not about how your computer looks. It’s about how you use it — ensuring it has everything you need and nothing you don’t.