I think learning to focus and tune certain things out is a skill like any other, that anyone can learn to a degree. Admittedly I haven't made much progress here either, but I think that with practice it becomes easier.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree with your idea about changing your environment. This is the single easiest thing I've found that helps me focus. Of course, there's always still the rest of the Internet...
Ditto ... it could be so awesome. I can do most of my dev work on a low-spec ARM box, given a decent keyboard and display. Bluetooth keyboard, some sort of projector ... I'm excited.
I don't agree with the idea of the "mad artist," an elite diamond-in-the-rough character who cloisters himself away on manic episodes of hyper-creativity, becomes an alcoholic, and emerges with a genius piece of Art.
Art is a slog. Artists are the ones with enough endurance to churn out shit day after day, refining the best of what they produce. The best artists are social, because that's where the most ideas flow freely.
Most artists I know (writers, musicians, graphic artists) are like this. Perpetuating the myth of the great lone genius is elitist, which is a discriminatory and dangerous ideology.
I didn't say that all artists, or even necessarily "the best" artists, fit a certain personality stereotype. Rather, I'm suggesting that the Steve Jobs personality paradigm is more commonly found among artists, and within the fields of the arts, than it is in business.
"The best artists are social, because that's where the most ideas flow freely."
Strongly disagree with this statement. History abounds with brilliant artists who were socially well adjusted and socially oriented. But it provides just as many examples, if not more, of artists who were introverted to the point of isolation, or who lived tempestuous social lives, or who wrestled with crippling mental illness (there is a shockingly highly incidence of bipolar disorder among history's great novelists, in particular).
I don't think one can make a categorical declarative about the personality types of "most artists," or "the best artists." There is too much variance within the set, and there are too many variables to consider. And "best" is a subjective minefield in its own right.
Well, ok. I suppose anecdotal samples are not the best evidence for either side. I'd like to imagine that most artists are relatively well-adjusted.
Anyway, that's the kind of world I'd like to live in. Everyone can (and should) be an artist to some degree. While I do agree with the fairly obvious point that some people are more talented than others, I reject the idea that there are "genius artists", spikes of talent on an otherwise smooth talent-graph.
EDIT to add: Why Jobs stood out is because the closest equivalent to what he was is a film director. But business is not set up to hand out accolades like Hollywood does. So instead of everyone learning who did what in Apple -- as with film we find out about sound editors, foley artists, etc, etc. -- we just get the face of Jobs.
I think the difference is that the technologies Steve was so instrumental in creating were already being developed without him. The GUI and personal computer were pretty much already there, he just got to it earliest. Without him these things would have been created in just about the same time span with little difference.
This is distinct from, say, Einstein's theory of relativity, which was a solution from a direction which no one was looking. Everything Steve helped create was already underway.
I don't think that a concept computer costing tens of thousands of dollars that didn't exist outside of PARC's labs with an interface that didn't include dragging as one of its metaphors is "almost" the Macintosh, nor do I see much evidence for a industry trend toward a GUI outside of Apple's efforts and Microsoft's primitive attempts at copying Apple.
Windows 1.0 came out in 1985, only one year after the Apple Macintosh. PARC invented the idea of the WIMP GUI, not Apple. I think it's a little silly to say that the idea would have died within PARC.
Th idea of WIMP really wasn't "invented" at PARC. That organisation gets way too much credit. They amalgamated several concepts that had been developed since the late 1940's. I'm not suggesting that PARC's work wasn't important, but to blithely dismiss Apple's contribution and suggest that it all started with PARC it ridiculous.
Go and learn about Vannevar Bush and Memex, Ivan Sutherland and Sketchpad, Doug Engelbart and his contributions like the the Mouse and his oN-Line System. The history of modern computing is simply not as black and white as you are trying to portray.
Finally, anyone that has used both Windows 1.0 (and 2.0 for that matter) will tell you just how awful it was, especially when compared to the Macintosh. Microsoft didn't come close to the ideas presented in the Mac until 1990 with Windows 3.0, and arguably it was the 3.1 release in 1992 that was useable.
I wouldn't say smartphones were on the way to what iPhone was. In fact, if you re-watch the keynote where the iPhone is announced, the reaction from the audience is fairly muted, because people were clearly afraid that a phone with nothing but a touch screen for an interface was going to suck really badly.
I think one important reason for a debate like this is that the leaders we choose as role models defines the direction we move as a culture. It's a moral question we're debating (or that we should be debating) - is it better to emulate Steve's leadership, or someone else's?
Shrinking from normative discussions like this is essentially abandoning the idea that there is any moral dimension to technology, which is more dangerous than any side you can take in the debate.
There is a difference, of course, between meaningful discussion and fanboyism. But whether or not Steve is worthy of the praise he has is definitely worth discussing.
No, I think we should admire people's accomplishments and not necessary look for role models. We should encourage people to aspire to do great things like Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Newton, John Harrison, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison), etc. Endlessly debating what kind of a person they were doesn't accomplish anything.
At the end of today, ask yourself what you actually accomplished. Are you making forward progress on your goal or dream? You get about 30,000 days to accomplish it.
Role models exist for a reason, and that is that we can do our best to be like them. It's not like we're arbitrarily judging character just for the hell of it. I know that I would like a role model that could show how to be a good person and do well in life. The trouble is, exactly as it says in the article, people look up to Steve Jobs and act like dicks because he did the same as was successful. And that doesn't work. And those people will probably never see their dreams through because they have Mr. Jobs, or Thomas Edison, or whoever else as a role model. So it is very important.
How about simply try to find inspiration in different people for their talents and what they've done. Encouraging the idea of role models in the way that you describe "you should be just like him/her" is a little weak minded.
There are lots of not so famous people with great stories where I find inspiration. For example:
Pretty similar to my workflow, but why do you destroy the box after every session? `vagrant up` on my laptop takes a few minutes at least to build and provision a vagrant machine.
Usually I just use `vagrant suspend`. Seconds vs minutes. Time > organization IMHO.
Of course, but if you do that please also use a CI tool (such as Jenkins) to ensure the Vagrantfile stays valid. It's actually good to rebuild that VM regularly, especially when it's almost time to deploy.
I haven't done it myself, but I've heard that the same effect (clean starting point) can be achieved with snapshots and restores without the waiting time - it is supposed to work very fast.
That said, I wholeheartedly agree with your idea about changing your environment. This is the single easiest thing I've found that helps me focus. Of course, there's always still the rest of the Internet...