I often find myself in a situation where I need to interrupt my development to focus on writing something; but I don’t want to screw up my development environment (open apps, browsers, consoles, terminal windows, etc.).

I used to use OS X’s Hide Others command (Command+Option+H) from the Application Menu, but recently I’m trying a new approach. When I need to write, I create a new Desktop (using Mission Control) and put just the document/app/window I’m working on there.

This allows me to pause what I’m working on and focus on something else while I need to, then I can kill the extra Desktop and get right back to what I was doing with my development environment still intact.