I find that writing on a computer is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it’s an absolute godsend. I can type way faster than I write by hand, and copy/paste is my salvation in revision. On the other had, my laptop is a sinkhole of procrastination. It’s awesome having all my music and TV shows in one place, but not when I have a term paper—or three—looming overhead. Here are two applications I’ve found and swear by for curbing distractions and getting down to business.
WriteRoom— $24.99, Free Trial — Mac OS X, iOS
I often find myself distracted by all the bells and whistles of Microsoft Word. Struggling with a thesis, I’ll get caught up in formatting instead of working my argument. WriteRoom is essentially a word processor circa 1980. It’s a full screen text editor with quietly integrated features like word-count and spell-check. The full-screen view shuts out everything but what I need to be focusing on. While I still rely on Microsoft Word for the finishing touches, I find I rarely reach this final stage without using WriteRoom to write my draft.
Freedom for Mac & PC— $10, Free Trial — Mac OS X, Win XP & 7
This application is recommended by writing celebrities, including Dave Eggers, Naomi Klein, Peter Sagal, Norah Ephron, Nick Hornby, and Seth Godin.
Freedom for Mac & PC continues this theme of self-restriction as liberation. Eliminating distraction is the best way to crank out words and craft a cohesive essay (see these tips for how to declutter your workspace). My number one distraction when working on my computer is the Internet—and I am not alone. 
Freedom helps me stay on task by blocking my Internet access for a set amount of time. While I was concerned this would be an impediment to my writing process, now when I’m writing and something occurs to me that I want to look up I just add it to my “to search list” for when I go back online. For anything wildly urgent, I’ll ask a housemate if I can check one thing on his or her computer, or look it up on my smartphone. Internet access is never far away, but it’s worth getting a little distance once in a while.
-By Zach Valenti ’12
Zach,
Thank you so much for such helpful tips. It is true that the internet is very, very fun, especially when there are so many pages to be written!
I find that it is often helpful for me to listen to white noise, beach sounds, or this lovely music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBVi2TCHb64) when I study. I also like to look at inspiring pictures of my friends and family to keep me going.