As a builder I often kept the F3 debug screen open so I would know where I was at. It was slightly annoying in Minecraft versions prior to 1.8. But now it is just completely annoying as it takes up over half the screen.
My answer to this is in the mod No More F3
On start up the overlay screen is off. All you need to do to activate it is press the 'L' key.
An overlay screen will be displayed in the top left corner as shown below.

The information shown is what I like to know when I build.