"All These Background Apps Divert My Attention!"

One thing that always seems to divert my attention from the task at hand are background apps that have stuff going on. Even being able to see an apps window is sometimes enough to have my brain ask 'Hey, shouldn't we be working on that now, instead of this?'

Haven't you always noticed that a clean uncluttered desktop tends to free your mind to concentrate on what you're doing right now? When I first got my Mac, I stumbled across an application called Spirited Away. It's an oldie but a goodie. Works fine under Leopard and it's free too.

It does one job and that's to whisk all background apps off and put them behind the desktop and it does this after a certain amount of inactivity time that you configure. You can get any running application back by the usual methods such as Cmd-Tab or via the Dock. It doesn't touch the operation of any application other than it's visibility.

Check out Spirited Away HERE