A story telling to save me from a therapist consultation.
No space square world. I realize that that this could be my theme philosophy. This is my general approach:
- windows manager: tiling (bspwm)with no spaces, squared windows, no decorations, no visual effects
- theme: transparency and grey background buttons/white text
Over two decades I went from a fancy looking machine to its complete opposite where minimalism is king. How did I make such a big jump?
To make it brief, recreating this comfort look that invaded my real environment felt reassuring at first in my virtual life. But as time went by I noticed that smooth rounded stuff that transiently showed up on my screen created:
- more and more distraction and negatively impacted my productivity
- some frustration when something didn’t run as expected because I felt that everything should be as smooth as the appearance of my screen
I would definitely say that I feel way better now and I’m more efficient but I also admit that I’ve reached an extreme where:
- I don’t appreciate screens over 14" anymore because I feel like it’s taxing on my eyes movement and again a waste of space
- I don’t like wasting a pixel of space if not justified. This is also maybe influenced by preference for small screens
- I need extreme simplicity (which brings efficiency) to all aspects of my workflow. So I use a 36-key split keyboard, a trackball, vim-like keybindings everywhere possible, use terminal as much as I can, use fzf for all my file searches…
Hope you will never end up like me but nice to have friends in this group if it’s too late for you ^^
Simplicity and organization can be very Zen, my friend.
Perhaps instead of judging yourself so harshly, you consider that others may see the positives of simplicity and small-scale as well.
Not everybody needs big and flashy. Utilitarian isn’t a bad thing. Utilitarian simplicity can be its own art form.
You’re right.