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Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

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Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#141

Post by wzdd »

atsaloli wrote: post #5
noduerme wrote: post #2

I've been a laptop purist most of my life, and prefer to work outside my house / office. Only recently I got a Big Monitor™ for a mini pc. It's really messed with my head. Now when I look at my 15" laptop everything looks incredibly small. Not just that, but the scroll direction is opposite on the pc, so if I'm working side by side I find myself accidentally scrolling each one backwards, or actually typing into the w…

You can configure the scroll direction on the Mac. So you can have them both go the same way.

You can also configure the scroll direction on Windows (through the registry with 10, using the settings GUI with 11) and in Linux (depending your DE).

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#142

Post by skydhash »

nchmy wrote: post #121
kartoffelsaft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiling merely changes the idiosyncrasies, and I say this as someone who primarily uses them. (hyprland in my case) If you created a window right now, where will it go? Which window will it take its space from? Does it use your focused window? Your mouse position? If your WM supports mixed floating & tiling, how does it go when you flip a window between them? etc. That's all cognitive load when you aren't familiar and…

Yes, I tried a tiling window manager for about an hour and then stopped. It was absolute madness as the window size and positioning was seemingly random. I can't comprehend how anyone can use them

Tiling window manager means relying heavily on workspaces. You distribute the windows over workspaces.

And most algorithms for management are deterministic. The position and the size of the new windows is always known.

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#143

Post by BirAdam »

znpy wrote: post #137
microtonal wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always use DisplayPort over USB-C DP-Alt (or Thunderbolt on some displays) and I literally never have a problem across various LG, Dell and Apple Studio Displays. MacBook Pro M1 Pro or MacBook Pro M5 Sounds like something is really broken in your setup? On the other hand, sleeping/waking Thunderbolt displays on my ThinkPad with Linux regularly leads to kernel panics, across several kernel versions.

Recent thinkpads are a bit of shit-tier laptops, and linux doesn’t help much (it’s not linux’s fault). for personal use I gave up after almost twenty years of thinkpad+linux and got a MacBook neo. So far it’s been great, much much better than my shit-tier ryzen-based x13g1 with 8c/16t and 32gb RAM. (Edit: it’s also more reliable when driving my 34” 1440p external display).

I had used Linux since mid-1990s and gave it up for Apple Silicon. Not fighting my hardware/software has been great despite the diminution of Apple’s software stack.

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#144

Post by BirAdam »

znpy wrote: post #135
JSR_FDED wrote: post #89

I spent decades completely happy with Cmd+Tab. Now I’m helping someone develop a trading system and I need to see several log files simultaneously, a broker GUI, and neovim. Once I realized that in order to answer a single question I needed to Cmd+Tab at least four times, often more, I added two monitors and it’s dramatically lowered my stress level. FYI, on older MacBooks you can’t add more than one extra screen, bu…

I was about to post something very similar: the degree of benefit you get from having multiple displays depends a lot on the amount of multi-tasking that you have. If you can focus most of your time on a single window then a single monitor is just fine. But when you have to reason across multiple windows very very often then multiple displays help a lot. For me it’s a bit messy: i am a cloud engineer and the kind of…

Similar job. My solution was a single 4k monitor and Stage Manager. I can tile viewing a log and having a terminal open, and then just pop back to a browser when I need to. Plus, terminal can have tabs.

When monitors were 1024 by 768, I needed more than one monitor. Now that everything is designed to be one’s only window at 1920 by 1080, I need a 4k monitor. I imagine that when 4k becomes the default, I will need a 16k monitor.

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#145

Post by eitally »

I'm not a SWE, and when I write code anymore it's just as a hobby. For work I'm in a business function and my 32" 4k monitor has been setup with 5-6 persistent windows since covid.

1. Center top: videoconferencing space. Approximately 1/3 width and 1/2 height of screen is used for Zoom/Meet/Teams. 2. Top left: chat (Slack now, previously Teams or Google Chat). Half height and 1/4 width. 3. Bottom left: Calendar (Zoom now, Google previously). Half height and 1/4 width. 4. Bottom center: primary browser window with dozens of tabs open, also used for email & calendar. 1/2 width and 1/2 height. 5. bottom right: Claude 6. Top right: working document(s). 1/3 width and 3/4 height. When I finish something, I'll close this, or occasionally move to a tab group in my primary browser.

This method of organization works pretty well and allows me to 1) get work done, 2) monitor comms, and 3) not miss meetings. If I need to focus and not allow others to disturb me, I'll just minimize the Slack & primary browser windows and make the working doc browser window(s) larger.

This is all plugged into a Macbook (14") that sits on my desk. The laptop screen contains a single browser window signed into a personal profile, and is used exclusively for non-work stuff -- mostly email.

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#146

Post by TacticalCoder »

> On a 34" ultrawide monitor, it was too easy to put YouTube running on the left side

This has zero to do with an ultra-wide monitor and all to do with a lack of self-discipline.

I bought one of the first 38" ultra-wide monitor that came out from LG and, ten years later, I'm still rocking on it every day.

You know what? My main computer doesn't even have sound. You read that correctly. No sound. So no Youtube vids. No games. Not that I'd be tempted: but because I've got actually zero need for sound on that machine.

And I'm no luddite: I've got two servers at home, more in datacenters, countless Pi's, NUCs, and laptops. But on my work machine: it is no sound and a 38" ultra-wide.

If you need to use a monitor the size of a stamp to make sure you can't run youtube vids at the same time you're working, the issue is you, not the monitor.

Re: Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

#149

Post by FrojoS »

Guys, this is a well known and under utilized effect of human psycho physiology. Visually focusing on a single point, small object, or just small visual field (aka tunnel vision) increases mental focus.

AFAIK it’s also one of the reasons we all get “glued” to smartphone screens.

In this paper, more than 20 deg visual field for a screen and subject performance went down: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...

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