Summary
- App and file icons are visual distractions that draw attention away from the task at hand.
- Desktop icons and taskbars invite me to attempt, typically unsuccessfully, to multitask.
- I prefer using keyboard shortcuts and voice assistants to launch apps rather than clicking desktop icons.
If an app icon appears on my desktop—ZAP! Gone. I now even hide my taskbar so that nothing greets me but a pristine wallpaper and my open apps. I don’t plan to be less vigilant any time soon.
I’m easily distracted
And visual clutter doesn’t help
There is something I’ve come to accept about myself: I get distracted easily. I don’t just mean that I am derailed when someone comes by to ask me a question, nor do I mean that I need to enable Do Not Disturb mode to silence all notifications. I mean that if my eyes rest on anything on-screen that is unrelated to what I’m working on, my mind wanders off.
When I think of ways to increase productivity, that also means figuring out how much clutter I can remove from my screen. The two are one and the same.
I know some people work best with complicated software that makes as many features as possible accessible with the least amount of mouse movement. I work best with minimalist software that displays as little as necessary to accomplish the task at hand.
App icons make me want to switch apps
The temptation to multitask
Desktop icons of all kinds are designed to be pressed. That’s the whole reason they’re there. Applications in particular have icons that are meant to grab your attention and entice you to click them instead of the poor, undeserving apps they’re next to. It’s good marketing. It’s good graphic design. It’s good psychological manipulation.
I find a desktop to be the most distracting place to possibly put these icons. Since I don’t work with windows maximized, especially not on my 4K monitor, my desktop and what’s on it are always visible. It’s hard for me to imagine getting much done when all I want to do is tidy up all the clutter piling up just outside my app window.
I’ve removed desktop icons from my background for my entire adult life. More recently, I’ve started to auto-hide the taskbar as well. Now that any distracted time increasingly eats into my income, it is not doing me any favors to see NVIDIA GeForce NOW or YouTube in my taskbar. Even apps related to productivity, like my calendar or reminder apps, aren’t worth keeping visible. I can open those apps when I consciously remember to sit down and manage them, rather than because glancing over the taskbar made the thought pop into my mind.
I prefer searching for apps by name
Less clutter, more precision
To a certain extent, desktop icons could make sense if they were my preferred way to open apps. They’re not. I would rather click an app launcher, but even that isn’t something I do often when I’m sitting at my PC. I default to keyboard shortcuts instead.
I use Samsung DeX instead of Windows, but the keyboard shortcut and behavior I speak of is the same. Tap the Windows key, type the first few characters of an app’s name, and hit Enter. I have developed this muscle memory for well over a decade. The mere thought of clicking a desktop icon feels so much slower, which means the desktop icon doesn’t serve any function for me other than being a visual distraction. This is also the case with files, which are just as searchable in a file manager.
I’ve even started using voice assistants
Hands-free control
Using keyboard shortcuts is a habit I’ve long had, but more recently I’ve started to develop a new way of using my computer. Rather than moving my focus away from typing in order to activate a keyboard shortcut, I’ve started talking to my computer instead.
This is one of the ways voice assistants are helpful. I ask Bixby to open an app using a phrase like, “Hi Bixby, open Slack” or use even less precise guidance like “Hi Bixby, show me pictures” to open my gallery app. Cortana and Copilot used to provide similar functionality on Windows, before Cortana bit the dust and Microsoft downgraded Copilot in 2024.
Voice assistants have also stepped in to manage my music playback. It’s easy to tell them to pause or unpause what is currently playing, helping me avoid the pitfalls of opening the music app and feeling tempted to play a new song or moving my mouse to the system tray, where I might see an onslaught of new notifications.
Similarly, voice assistants serve as my Pomodoro app. I tell Bixby to set a timer for 25 minutes, and when it goes off, I tell Bixby to set another one for 5 minutes. This saves me from having to find the best Pomodoro app that works the way I like. Whenever I try, I tend to come back to using my built-in clock and timer app anyway.
My setup won’t work for everyone, but it works for me
There is no one way to use a computer that works for everyone. I know that what I’ve described sounds like a complete nightmare for some. I also know that my use of a voice assistant is also a luxury available to someone who works remotely from home that isn’t viable in a shared office.
Yet part of the fun of using computers or any tool is figuring out how to make them work best for us. And for me, that means no icon is ever to occupy a permanent spot on my screen, be that on the desktop or the taskbar.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
