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Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

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Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#101

Post by criddell »

lexicality wrote: post #20

I disagree heavily - Having a secondary monitor with documentation / work plans on it is enormously useful as you can glance at it without having to do anything more special than turn your head. In fact, I would go so far as to say that three monitors is optimum since you can have your code on one, the output of your code (continuous tests/hot reload/etc) on another and documentation on the last allowing you to see a…

I use Windows 10's virtual desktop to hold stuff that I want instantly available but not always visible. Plus it makes it easy for me to work using the same muscle memory when I'm at my desktop or on my laptop.

My desktop monitor is a big one though (and 4k) and that helps. On it I do many of the things you say you do with multiple monitors.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#103

Post by ungoliant »

massysett wrote: post #18

Next, he should cut down his desk so that he can only fit one piece of paper on it. After all, it's better to focus on one thing at a time.

You can definitely take it to an extreme. If you only read one word at a time, why show multiple words on the display? Why not a single character!

But that's not the point. There's an optimal level of visual busy-ness. Doubling your screen real-estate looks cool, but is it actually better? For me it is not.

I had a friend at work who had a four-monitor setup, and then somebody quit and he got ANOTHER thunderbolt monitor. Once he had all 5 set up, he got so agitated by the quantity of data coming in that he couldn't get anything done. I would bet that everybody has that threshold. So how much stress was he feeling with 4 monitors? Probably some... maybe not more than his baseline daily work-stress, but did he need to take on that extra stress?

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#104

Post by mayoff »

njitram wrote: post #73
deathanatos wrote: post #40

> Virtual Desktops For the Win There's a few things about virtual desktops on OS X (the OS I use at work) that just absolutely kill them for me: 1. OS X will re-order keyboard inputs when the inputs contain virtual desktop commands. That is, if you have two terminals open, one in one desktop, and one in another, and you type ^→¹ "hi", where "hi" ends up depends on how quickly you type the command . If you know the de…

Apparently Apple has enabled a feature to reduce/remove the motion when switching, not sure if that fixes point 1 above, but worth a try: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/255220/183228

This changes the sliding animation to a cross-fade. I don't think it's any faster than the sliding animation.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#107

Post by Walkman »

The reason I'm way more productive with multiple monitors* is not that I open twitter and want to look at it constantly, but because I open my code from different angles like: - comparing two pieces of code - opening code review and opening actual code in text editor on the other - opening a text editor for commit and looking at the diff on the other - open the documentation and look at the code on the other So I'm way faster at switching things or way better to compare things this way.

I tried i3m today (the tiling window manager) but I realized it not gonna fit my workflow because I can't have 10 windows open and look at just two-three at once because you either maximize and then you can look at only one thing at a time or see 10 tiny windows at once.

* Having one big enough monitor with huge resolution is the same, but one with simply HD resolution is not enough for me.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#108

Post by ajarmst »

I dislike multiple monitors. Part of this is going to be age-dependent. I prefer to work from my hand-written notes and a pen-annotated paper-spec, so I don't really have much of a need for a second monitor for my primary task, so the second monitor is usually just a source of distraction.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#109

Post by cauterized »

deathanatos wrote: post #40

> Virtual Desktops For the Win There's a few things about virtual desktops on OS X (the OS I use at work) that just absolutely kill them for me: 1. OS X will re-order keyboard inputs when the inputs contain virtual desktop commands. That is, if you have two terminals open, one in one desktop, and one in another, and you type ^→¹ "hi", where "hi" ends up depends on how quickly you type the command . If you know the de…

Try TotalSpaces. Fixes a few of these problems.
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