Find Your Focus: How a Chromebook Can Provide the Uninterrupted Experience You Need

Key Takeaways

• Chromebooks can help drive away distractions, offering a more productive writing experience.
• Chromebooks with limitations can be positive for productivity due to better focus.
• Chromebooks offer a premium feel at a lower cost than Mac or Windows laptops, enhancing usability.

If you’re reading this instead of focusing on work, you’re likely not alone. For many of us, the one tool we need for work, a computer, is also the source of the distractions that keep us from getting things done. That’s not why I bought a Chromebook, but getting one did lead to some surprising productivity benefits.

Driving Away Distractions

The idea of ditching your main computer for something more productive is hardly a new one, especially if the focus of your productivity is writing. There is a decades-long history of distraction-free writing devices like the Freewrite Alpha that have attempted to capture the simplicity of a typewriter while still offering the conveniences of modern word processors. Those devices have a small but dedicated following, but they aren’t for everybody.

There’s also no shortage of apps that attempt to provide a distraction-free writing experience—even Microsoft Word has a focus mode . I’ve turned to plenty of those as well, and, although I can’t say that any of them have made me a noticeably more productive writer, they have at least offered a more pleasant writing experience, and a welcome respite from the monotony of the likes of Word or Google Docs. And that’s to say nothing of other tools or techniques that take a more blunt approach to productivity, like blocking access to social media for a set period of time.

A Laptop With (Welcome) Limitations

Acer

Chromebooks may be a lot more capable than they used to be—even gaming Chromebooks are a thing now—but they’re still considerably more limited in functionality than your average Mac or Windows laptop. For my purposes, at least, that’s a good thing. And I’m far from even taking full advantage of all the capabilities the Chromebook does have.

While I’m using it as more than just a dedicated writing machine, compared to something like the Freewrite, I have kept my Chromebook fairly bare-bones. I’ve only installed a handful of apps on it, so I don’t have a ton of distractions staring me in the face, or random files littering the desktop when I open it up in the morning. It also helps that Chrome OS itself is considerably more streamlined than Windows or macOS, and rarely gets in the way of anything you’re trying to do.

If I want to do something I can’t do (or do well) on the Chromebook, like photo editing or messing around in GarageBand, I return to my MacBook—where I’m faced with all of those usual distractions I mentioned earlier. That distinction lets me essentially look at the Chromebook as my own “work laptop,” even though it’s not one issued to me by an employer. I’d never have considered that possibility if I was faced with the prospect of buying a second MacBook, but the affordability of the Chromebook made it a feasible option.

Chromebook’s Premium Advantage

Affordability is one of the biggest advantages of Chromebooks, but it can sometimes go a little too far in that direction. The absolute cheapest models make a few too many compromises with components and overall build quality to make them well suited as a distraction-free, productivity-focused device. If you’re willing to step up to mid-range or higher-end Chrombeooks, however, you can get a premium-feeling laptop for far less than a comparable Mac or Windows device would cost you.

That’s thanks to the downright modest hardware requirements of Chrome OS compared to Mac or Windows laptops, which means that you don’t have to worry about high-end specs just to enjoy snappy, responsive performance. That helps keep costs down on even the highest-end Chromebooks, which means you can get a lot more for your money when it comes to things like portability, durability, and actual usability.

Though the exact model is no longer available, I was able to get a Lenovo ThinkPad Chromebook for just a few hundred dollars that easily rivals other laptops costing two or even three times as much in terms of overall build quality. It has a fantastic screen, a keyboard that’s great to type on, and it just feels like a substantial piece of hardware—and that’s to say nothing of its 2-in-1 convertible design . Sure, it would undoubtedly struggle to run Windows at all with its meager processor, but it has handled everything I’ve thrown at it in Chrome OS just fine.

You shouldn’t ignore the core specs altogether, but it’s worth paying particular attention to the features that matter most to you, whether that’s ultra portability, a great keyboard, or a convertible design that lets you use the Chromebook as a tablet. It’s not even the worst idea to consider a model that’s a couple of years old if you can get one at a steep discount, especially since all Chromebooks are now guaranteed to receive software updates for ten years after their release date.

More Versatile Than You Might Think

Lenovo

Lenovo

Affordability may be the biggest selling point of a Chromebook, but versatility comes in a close second. While a Chromebook may be best suited as a secondary computer for some, you may be surprised at just how little you need to use that other computer, if at all. Also, if it’s not replacing another computer, it might just replace a standalone tablet if you opt for a Chromebook with a 2-in-1 design—some even have fully detachable keyboards for maximum versatility.

That can potentially open up your budget a bit more to focus on other upgrades, like an external monitor or a great mechanical keyboard. Or, as in my case, it could let you lean on the Chromebook as a stopgap measure of sorts if you’re waiting for the right time to upgrade your main computer.

Making It Your Own

Choosing a Chromebook as your own work laptop is the first step, but it’s up to you to tailor it to suit your needs. Experiment with different apps, try out Focus Mode , create multiple user accounts for work and nonwork purposes—find out what works best for you. A Chromebook may not be an inherently distraction-free device like some other options, but it does give you the flexibility to tune out as few or as many distractions as you like, and it’s thankfully a modest enough investment to make an experiment a worthwhile one.