On top of the fundamentals of actually having indent-mode working correctly, I also changed one minuscule detail.  On Emacs, just about every damn thing is configurable, including the typefaces used for each and every mode visible.  One of the things that's been bothering me forever is that, on a huge monitor, the cursor frequently got lost.  It was a dull orange color on the traditional light-grey Emacs background, which made it hard to find.

I changed it to a bright yellow, and that has also made a huge difference.  When changing panels (CTRL-x o) or just searching (CTRL-s), just moving the cursor a little bit can make it stand out now.

Since I use a keyboard-driven IDE with very little mousing, I recommend unclutter, a nice little program that also hides the mouse pointer after a brief timeout.  If you move the mouse, the pointer comes back.  Sometimes, the pointer is right above that tiny fragment of text you want to read.  Having it go away to leave your reading uninterrupted is quite nice.

And finally, under the Enlightenment window manager, Ctrl-Enter nails the current window to the top of the screen and blacks out everything underneath.  Useful if you need to manage your distractions.