Handy Links 4

Featured this week:
This week's collection of Handy Links center on simplicity, focus and making space for thinking — three practices which are challenged in an always-on world.

On a related note, I began a week-long Twitter vacation on Wednesday. I've been feeling especially fractured and distracted the last few weeks and wanted to take a step toward limiting inputs.

I'm already feeling positive benefits of focus, rest and getting more done.

What Happened to Downtime?

Here's an excellent article from Scott Belsky, showing how our distracted lives are impacting our ability to think deeply. He suggests 5 ways to disconnect and make space for sacred, interruption-free spaces where we can think, ponder and analyze again.

James Victore: Don't Be A Design Zombie

Designer James Victore talks about distraction and its corrosive effects in this interview with The 99 Percent. His quote "iPhones are killing our discipline, killing our ability for solitude, and killing our ability to be bored" was especially challenging to me this week.

Less but better: Dieter Rams in conversation

Here's a video interview with Dieter Rams of Braun, talking about his perspective on creating simply designed products for Braun for 40-plus years. Here's another great interview with Dieter from Gestalten.tv via Kottke.org. Great stuff!

Writer for iPad

In the style of a Dieter Rams object comes Writer for iPad, a text editor designed to keep things simple and let you focus on distraction-free writing. Just $5 from Information Architects. Now that I've bought an Apple Bluetooth keyboard I'm enjoying writing on the iPad in a way I couldn't when using the soft keyboard. Also worth checking out: Simplenote and PlainText.

Thanks for reading. Make sure to take time away from the noise this week.

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