Write or Die is a productivity tool that promises to put the "prod" in productivity. It's a clever little text input box that lets the writer set targets and consequences for not sticking to those targets.
This entry has a target of 300 words, and a time limit of 10 minutes, and normal consequences (instead of "electric shock" and "kamikaze" modes). If you deviate from your ongoing text input, and delay too much before typing, Write or Die starts playing obnoxious music - as indeed it did when I had to answer the door in the middle an edit.
As a writing environment, Write or Die is very spare - no formatting, no footnotes, no nothing. Type into a big input box and go. The spareness is appealing in that it doesn't give you anything to distract you from your mission except a timer on the bottom left and a running word count total on the right. If you want to edit, the best way to do it in this is to copy and paste the text box into something else and carry on with your edits there.
When you need to sit down and work, and not be distracted by anything, it's sometimes nice to trick yourself. I've used egg timers, countdown timers, and other "block the world out until everything else is done" systems before, and Write Or Die lives in that world. It looks a little too minimal to be a replacement for the regular tools I use, but I'd love to see some of its productivity monitoring tools embedded in the usual text edit systems I live in. (And the trumpet sound when you hit the target word count - with two minutes to spare! - is worth it.)
review by Lifehacker:
http://lifehacker.com/5081869/write-or-die-makes-sure-you-keep-churning-out-words
@natnie in the comments:
"I've been using it nearly exclusively for the past few days, and it's really kept me on track. I've written 2500 words today so far thanks to Write or Die 20 minute word sprints. Going for 5,000 by midnight, which will bring my word total to 33.5k"
Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | 11/12/2008 at 01:24 AM