Several months ago, I splurged on a new Macbook Air. I am fundamentally a PC person, but I wanted something that I could fit into my bags, carry around easily and - given my travel plans - would open comfortably on a plane tray table when the person in front of me had their seat reclined.

I must admit, I love my little mac - it's sleek, it's silent (solid state hard drive and no optical drive means it's a ninja laptop. There's not even a fan, it discharges its heat via tiny space monkeys. Quite literally the only sound it makes is the soft 'thap' of the keys as you type, or the click of the track-pad-button if you press it.) and it was so excited the first time I powered it up that it spent ten minutes singing me a welcome song in forty languages. 

I used it during that-November-thing-I-said-I-wouldn't-mention, whipping it out for a quick ten-minute writing session whenever I had a chance. I used it on the train, in bed, everywhere. And I noticed something really interesting.

I'm a two-monitor-minimum person. I now get claustrophobic with less, and try to put windows on screens that don't exist and end up tidying the desk subconsciously instead. I've been eyeing off Pratchett's six-screen-set up with envy, and musing on my own design for eight. Or ten. 

My macbook is 11 inches. Even given its impressive screen resolution, that's a tiny cubicle of screen realestate for someone who usually works on a farm.

But my productivity hasn't gone down. Quite the opposite.

There are a lot of things that I need screen space for. But it turns out that writing first drafts isn't one of them. In fact, the reduction in space helps me, because the writing takes up all the available screens. I don't have screen space left over where a browser is mooching around innocently, tempting me to read it, or a game is sitting on pause, or a movie or another project. It's just me and the words. That restriction in what I can do makes it easier for me to do what I meant to do, and harder for me to shirk off.

So - what's something that prevents you from writing as much as you can? And what restriction can you put in place so that it's easier to write than fall prey to that something?