Guess Jeans was one of the sponsors of their tour. All of us working on the VR project ended up with black baseball-ish caps that said Guess across the front. We wore those caps all of the time we were coding.

Lately, I’ve been having trouble focusing on coding when I am gifted with some moments to spare. I thought, How about I get a coding cap? I tried this about a year ago when I was having similar trouble. The cap didn’t really work then. The cap would itch after a few hours, and before that, I would forget I was wearing it. Once you start reading email and answering the phone in your coding cap, it loses its power.

So, today, I set out looking for a new coding cap… one that I could wear for a few hours, but one that I would notice I was wearing. I tried on a few hats. None of them felt powerful enough. They didn’t have the coding cap magic.

I grabbed a pair of lace-up, fishnet, fingerless gloves. I plan to leave one by my keyboard and the other in my purse. When it’s coding time, I’ll slip one on.

So far, they seem to work. When I reach to check email, I immediately notice my glove and stop. When the phone rings, I peek at the caller-id and decide whether it’s worth it to remove the glove. Sorry, Out of Area: I’m coding right now, and I don’t want to have to take off my glove to hear about the great things you can do for my windshield/interest-rates/auto-warranty/credit-card-processing.

Do you have a coding cap? specific lighting? specific music?