Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
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Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#2A news junkie finds out that distracting himself makes him less productive. From this we can conclude that ALL people who have two screens should forget the second one. Right.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#3truly laughable,
also when your primary screen is a 27 inch 1080p wide panel display as he seems to have in the picture, you probably aren't feeling as constrained as most people with their 4 year old low res 15 inch laptops.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#4I've gone back to a single screen. It turns out, using tools like SizeUp/Spectactle/etc. were all I needed to balance the two tasks I spend 90% of my time multitasking between - coding and the output.
When I had a second monitor on, it had my IMs, emails, Twitter, etc. and became a source of distraction more than anything.
Anecdotally, I've worked in bullpen offices where everyone has a second screen and consistently see Facebook, YouTube, or Netflix being actively used while coding. Not as passive background noise, but constant code, fb, code, skip commercial, etc.
It makes sense to me that by having more screens, either on our desks, in our hands, or on our walls, we're doing less while pretending to do more.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#5I agree that two are worse than one, but only if that one is big enough - 27" or above.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#6I've gone back to a single screen. It turns out, using tools like SizeUp/Spectactle/etc. were all I needed to balance the two tasks I spend 90% of my time multitasking between - coding and the output. When I had a second monitor on, it had my IMs, emails, Twitter, etc. and became a source of distraction more than anything. Anecdotally, I've worked in bullpen offices where everyone has a second screen and consistently…
Protip: put productive things on >both< monitors.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#7the only reason i have a second screen is because i have a laptop plugged into an external monitor.
I hardly use my retina display for anything. i miss my 17" mbp displays.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#8I think 2 (or more) screen displays make sense for professionals who need the extra screen constantly up -- e.g music producers seeing both their DAW audio lanes and individual sequencer piano rolls, or video editors watching the video tracks, color controls etc on one monitor and a full screen of the movie in the other.
For programmers not so much (even something like console output/build results you better decide when to focus on it, rather than constantly having it as a distraction).
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#9I've gone back to a single screen. It turns out, using tools like SizeUp/Spectactle/etc. were all I needed to balance the two tasks I spend 90% of my time multitasking between - coding and the output. When I had a second monitor on, it had my IMs, emails, Twitter, etc. and became a source of distraction more than anything. Anecdotally, I've worked in bullpen offices where everyone has a second screen and consistently…
Protip: put productive things on >both< monitors.
And now you're split between two productive things. More reason to procrastrinate.
Better just have the productive thing you should be focused on one at a time up on a sigle monitor.
Re: Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Protip: put productive things on >both< monitors.
And now you're split between two productive things. More reason to procrastrinate. Better just have the productive thing you should be focused on one at a time up on a sigle monitor.
Uhm, if it's distracting you from that task at hand, instead of helping you complete it, it's not a productive thing.
My code editor lives on one screen, usually with four files in veiw. My browser and console live on the other. It's really no different that one screen.