Have you ever sat down to write and get your thoughts out of your mind and onto the screen, only to find yourself constantly critiquing the things you just wrote?
You’re wrestling with yourself to stay focused and telling yourself that you’ll come back to your previous thoughts to clean up later.
But the temptation is too great—you give in, you take your eyes away and in a split second, your thoughts have fled you and you’re left frustrated trying to recall the thought you were sure that you could hold onto.
I know I’ve struggled with this. I’m actually struggling with this exact problem while writing this post.
This is why I built Stille for Obsidian. It’s a plugin that helps you focus on your writing, one section at a time.
Benefits
With Stille, all other sections of your writing are silenced, besides the one you’re currently working on.
Which means, no more shiny objects to take away your focus.
What does Stille do?
Stille provides a ribbon toggle, a hot key command and a command prompt to allow you to quickly toggle in and out of focus of your writing.
While Stille, out of the box provides you with a default to get you immediately focused on your writing, you are in control of your experience.
You can adjust your focused writing experience in the settings.
Fancy writing in Vim mode? Stille works and looks great in Vim mode as well.
Inspiration
Stille isn’t an original idea. Many other writing applications have a feature usually called focus mode.
After I had built much of Stille’s version 1, I then discovered that there’s actually a plugin for Obsidian similar to it.
My inspiration actually comes from one of my favorite Vim plugins, Limelight by Junegunn Choi.
Limelight, Goyo and Vim were previously my favorite way of writing in markdown. The benefits of this setup was, it allowed me to focus on my writing, one section at a time. Removing all distractions until I could get my ideas out onto the screen.
When reviewing my writing, it also removes visual noise so that I can be sure that I’ve communicated my thoughts concisely.
The name Stille is the German word for silence. I thought the name was appropriate as it helps silence everything around the section you’re currently focused on.
While Stille won’t solve writers block or finding the words to write. What I do hope it provides you is focus when you do find the words in Obsidian.
You can find Stille on the Obsidian plugin directory.
