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Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

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Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#121

Post by rdiddly »

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…

Yeah I have 3. I can & do use just one when I work from home on a laptop, and I've long been a fan of "uni-tasking" so I totally see his point. But it tends to be not-as-fast. My usual modus operandi with 3 screens is to have one instance of the IDE in the middle for whatever I'm working on, one instance on the right for the relevant dependency or example I'm following, and then on the left is usually some type of docs or Stack Overflow. Or Hacker News if it's break-time. When my neck starts to hurt from looking left for too long, that means it's time to get back to work!

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#122

Post by reitanqild »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #117
jimbokun wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you know why people are at work for so many hours in the US.

Europe too. I'm guilty of that myself; I always keep at least Messenger tab open (for communication with my SO) and I check HN frequently. Let's be honest here: rare is a person who can do cognitively demanding work 8+ hours a day for longer stretches of time. Especially when that's a job, and not one's true life calling. I also personally find it hard to completely ignore distractions just because of other people -…

I also have Telegram running and I check HN when I am stuck.

I guess a few people misunderstood me. I'm not talking about 100% separation between work and personal life[0], I'm talking about being a programmer, discussing on HN how distractions and interruptions ruins flow - and then running twitter and what not in the workspace. What do I know: some of my habits are weird but works for me but this stuff sounds weird to me :-/

[0]: neither me, my wife nor my boss woukd like that - it's just too practical for my boss that I can make a note when inspiration strikes - outside of work, read work related materials whenever I come across them - even outside of work etc. My boss has stopped caring where I work from and when so as long as I work on my real job (working for a client now) I'll just work from home if my wife wworks night. I and my boss both make sure this is a win-win and my wife has an agreement to call twice or more if she needs to get hold of me before next time I check Telegram.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#123

Post by erikpukinskis »

Why can't this be a matter of preference? A lot of people in this thread saying "you're wrong, it DOES increase productivity!" and others saying "no, it DOESN'T increase productivity!" It seems obvious to me that it's not necessary or sufficient for max productivity, but if it's part of your productivity strategy (or not) then great.

I use a single monitor, mostly because I like being able to move around, from the desk to the couch to the coffee shop to my yard. I'm not going to bring a spare monitor into my yard.

I also program in 40 character width, so that helps a lot. I can have a console, debugger, and a browser all open side by side on a single screen. If I want 6 pieces of open open side by side on my laptop I can do it easily, although I pretty much never need more than 2.

I find workspaces work just as well as monitors. I have three, and I four-finger-swipe to move between them. I don't see why four finger swiping would be slower than turning my head or my eyes.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#124

Post by ACow_Adonis »

Don't know what the guy is doing, but at my previous workplace one of the most frustrating things was that due to hot desking and a policy of everyone works with laptops, they didn't believe that analysts required multiple monitors.

At home, if I've got the repl, a terminal, only one code file open, and some documentation/stack overflow, I'm already at 4 windows.

At work, have rstudio, a database, a word and excel file with some documentation and suddenly one monitor feels minuscule.

You took away my office walls on which I printed out and hung up cheat sheets and reference materials, then you took away my cubicle walls on which I did the same, please don't put out articles that will make them take away my monitors!

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#125

Post by Delmania »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #117
jimbokun wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you know why people are at work for so many hours in the US.

Europe too. I'm guilty of that myself; I always keep at least Messenger tab open (for communication with my SO) and I check HN frequently. Let's be honest here: rare is a person who can do cognitively demanding work 8+ hours a day for longer stretches of time. Especially when that's a job, and not one's true life calling. I also personally find it hard to completely ignore distractions just because of other people -…

> Let's be honest here: rare is a person who can do cognitively demanding work 8+ hours a day for longer stretches of time. Especially when that's a job, and not one's true life calling.

No one is capable of doing a full 8 hours of cognitively demanding work. I think Cal Newport detailed it out, but the most dedicated and focused people can achieve 6 hours of productive work. Most people can average 4. The 8 hours/day, 40 hour work week is a relic from manufacturing work that has carried over into the office. Between cubicles, open office layouts, meetings, the belief you have to be on premise to be productive, and the execs deluding themselves into thinking they're working the hardest, the US corporate area is not set up for productivity.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#126

Post by enobrev »

zokier wrote: post #113
enobrev wrote: post #91

I can hardly imagine being productive on a single monitor anymore. After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows. And then I took a job with a startup and bought a laptop since they wanted me to show up in the office on occasion, and working with one monitor was like drivi…

> After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows That seems bit odd (in this specific case); half of a 27" display should have almost exactly the same screen-estate as a 19" screen (1280x1440 vs 1280x1024), and even Windows can do half (and quarter) screen layouts easily th…

For me, the larger screens made for either more wasted space or more effort to figure out placement of windows on each screen.

With my three wide screens, I'm almost always running one window per screen - not necessarily full-screen, but still, one-per. With two larger screens, I constantly found myself trying to tetris my screens into an "ideal" layout.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#127

Post by addicted »

One thing I did realize is that I suspect a lot of the "1 monitor is good enough" comments are probably from OSX users.

Frankly, inbuilt window management in Windows (especially with KB shortcuts) is far superior to that on OS X. The Win + Arrow Keys combinations just make multiple monitors so much easier to use.

You can get this on OS X (although it has never felt as nice to me) with BetterTouchTool, but I wonder how many OS X users who don't like multiple monitors have actually tried it with BTT installed.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#128

Post by andylynchnz »

developer2 wrote: post #120
randallsquared wrote: post #47

On my Mac, I can 3 finger swipe to quickly switch between multiple virtual desktops. This takes less than a second and it doesn’t require me to turn my head and refocus my eyes on content in a different spot. This reveals something odd about me, or about the author. Not sure which. It seems obvious to me that it's less context-switch overhead to glance at something that's already physically in my peripheral vision th…

The truly monstrous users like myself use both systems: 3 monitors, with multiple virtual spaces on each. I can't have it any other way. The primary spaces on each monitor are a) IDE, b) Chrome, c) Terminal. The secondary space on monitor 1 is database tool, monitor 2 is Postman for API testing, monitor 3 is a split-screen of email and Slack. A benefit of this system are that email and Slack are on a dedicated screen…

In our office we have six screens on most desks. Are first we thought it was a little over the top but it's hard to imagine cutting back now; you can lay out everything at once and it's just there - no switching. The only odd thing is we need water cooling in the desks to keep the heat down, but it works nicely.

Re: Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors

#129

Post by adwf »

enobrev wrote: post #126
zokier wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After having three 19" monitors for a couple very productive years, I tried switching to two 27" monitors. It added up to more space, to be sure, but I spent way too much time managing windows That seems bit odd (in this specific case); half of a 27" display should have almost exactly the same screen-estate as a 19" screen (1280x1440 vs 1280x1024), and even Windows can do half (and quarter) screen layouts easily th…

For me, the larger screens made for either more wasted space or more effort to figure out placement of windows on each screen. With my three wide screens, I'm almost always running one window per screen - not necessarily full-screen, but still, one-per. With two larger screens, I constantly found myself trying to tetris my screens into an "ideal" layout.

Yeah I'm much the same. If I've got one monitor, give me 32" with as many pixels as you can get. Two monitors, give me 2x24"; Three monitors, 1x24" central, 2x22" side panels.

I use a tiling window manager. If I have a single monitor I'll split it evenly, but I'll need as much space as I can - whilst using virtual desktops to avoid clutter.

If I have two monitors I'll tend to use full screen apps rather than split, but may occasionally split open a terminal or small chat window. By small I mean, a narrow vertical tile rather than a wide horizontal.

If I have three monitors, the extra width of large monitors starts to get annoying with how far around you have to look to see the farthest extent to left or right. It's easier to have smaller monitors (although still as high definition as you can get) and run them with full screen applications.

The big problem though with the large monitors is that you have to do too much window management. On a 22" screen a horizontally designed app at fullscreen is great. At 32" you start feeling like you wasted a ton of space off to the right. So you use your tiling WM to do a vertical split. At that point the horizontally designed app at 3840×2160 is now a vertical oriented app at 1920x2160, which is not at all what you want, so you adjust the tiling to make the 2nd frame smaller. But if the 2nd frame should also be horizontal, you have to move it to a different monitor... Thus ending up doing a load of annoying window management when your WM is supposed to do it for you.

So really, big monitors are just a tad annoying unless it's the only monitor.

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