I thought this bit about minireviews was so useful I wrote an AppleScript application to test myself whether or not I was shaving a yak. It’s really simple, like 7 lines; it brings up a dialog box which asks, “Are you shaving a yak?” (meaning are you doing something unimportant?). The default is Yes, as I get distracted often; if I click Yes the computer beeps at me and asks me the same question 2 minutes later. If I click No, ‘cause I’m doing something important, it remains silent for another 20 mins. It’s not driving me crazy, so far, and it has helped me keep focused on my GTD lists today. The text is below:

on idle tell application “Finder” activate display dialog “Are you shaving a yak?” buttons {“No”, “Yes”} default button 2 if the button returned of the result is “Yes” then beep beep beep set x to (2 * 60)

    else
        set x to (20 * 60)

    end if
end tell
return x

end idle

Enjoy!