If using multiple screens at work made you more productive, care to give an example or two what do you put on one and the other and how they interact? Perhaps also negatives, in what situations that doesn’t help?
Hypothesis: they only work with transformation type work e.g. translation where you read a document in one and translate in another, or read a spec in one and write code to implement it in another or at any rate the output you generate is strongly dependent on an input that you need to keep referring to.
I actually borrowed a TV as a second screen because I need to re-create the layouts of document reports from an old accounting software in a new. So it is handy to have the example on the TV while I work on the new one. Of course a printout on a music-stand would work just as well...
Software development: text editors (or IDE) on one screen, terminal/command-prompt window(s) for building, running tests, etc., on another.
Exploratory work in MATLAB: editor(s) and MATLAB figure windows (plots, images, …) on one screen, MATLAB command window on another.
I use virtual desktops as well as multiple monitors, so things like email and web browser are over in another universe and less distracting. (This does have the downside that when I’m, say, replying to something on Less Wrong, my work is over in another universe and less distracting.) So are other things (e.g., documents being written, to-do lists, etc.).
Of course things may get moved around; e.g., if I’m writing a document based on some technical exploration then I may want a word processor coexisting with MATLAB and a web browser.
At home: email on one monitor, web browser on another. (And all kinds of other things on other virtual desktops.)
Write on S1, execute / do other things with what is written on S2
Third case, such as web browser and email does not sound that useful to me, but it at least forces you to move your neck which is actually good, lower chance if getting stiff and painful from staring ahead unmoving for hours. Actually I wonder if from this angle, encouraging motion, we should put another one on the floor, one on the ceiling :) If neither money nor work productivity was a huge issue, the most healthy setup would be robotic arms rearranging screens around you every few minutes in 3D, encouraging regular movement along all axes.
Sometimes useful: e.g. get email saying “hey, look at this interesting thing on the web”, or “could you please do X” where X requires buying something online. Or see something interesting on the web and send an email to a friend about it. But yeah, it’s not hugely valuable. (I have two monitors on my home machine because sometimes I do more serious things on it and they’re useful then. And because there was a spare monitor going cheap so I thought I might as well.)
robotic arms rearranging screens around you
If money and productivity were that little an issue, why would you be sat at this contraption in the first place?
Good question. Actually—it might not even reduce productivity. Suppose you put a terminal where you run commands on the average every ten minutes on one such screen positioned on a fully 3D positionable robotic arm. You lose maybe 2 seconds finding out if this time is it is over your left shoulder or up right on the ceiling. But the improved blood flow from the movement could improve your cognitive skills and maybe being forced into a 3D all-around situational awareness “awakens the ancestral hunter” ie.e. improves awareness, focus and concentration. A good example is driving a car. It tends to put me in a focused mode.
But, lacking that, at least having some neck movement between screens must be a good thing.
I have 2 desks in my office, both with multiple screen layouts. Your question made me think about how I use them and it comes down to the task I am performing.
Like others, when I am programming I typically have an IDE where I am doing work on one and a reference open on another. When doing web development my third monitor usually has a browser where I can immediately refresh my work to see results, for other development it may be a virtual machine or remote desktop that I am logged into.
When I am doing academic work, I often have EndNote (reference manager) on one monitor, the document I am writing on another and the documents I am finding / reading on the third.
Since both my desks are next to each other, I often “borrow” a monitor from the other setup to keep communication windows open (Skype, Lync, Hangouts, #Slack etc.) This allows me to keep in touch with coworkers and colleagues without having to flip windows every time I get a message.
So I would say there are three purposes identified:
I put source code/IDE/logging output in one, and the program I’m running in the other, particularly when debugging a program; running in debug mode or watching logs is simpler.
I also put remote desktops in a separate screen, often copying the contents of configuration files over as text, as I don’t generally get the ability to drag files directly into environments (people who prevent direct copying of files or dragging and dropping, your security is getting in the way without providing any security—Base64 encoding exists).
Otherwise I will have social applications open in one (e-mail application, chats with clients, etc), and my actual work in the other.
I of course do much of the “work on A, reference on B” that others have talked about—the IDE open on one screen and the documentation open on the other—but it’s also worth pointing out the cases where there are multiple pieces of reference material that I’m trying to collide somehow, and having both of them open simultaneously is obviously incredible useful.
The typical theme is reference material on one screen, and working material on the other screen. The equivalent of having all your reference material open on your desk so you are not flipping back an forth through notes.
I work with multiple screens and I estimate that I save between 20 minutes and one hour per day in comparison to using only one. I do financial work and examples would be: Quickbooks open on one screen and an internet bank account open on the other; or the account open on one page and some financial pdf open on the other; or similar things.
One screen (small square monitor I found for free) is often filled up with my matlab data files and matlab command window. The other (large) contains some combination of figures generated by my matlab scripts from my yeast data (constantly popping in and out), analysis I am writing, and scripts I am editing.
(I should really map out the dependencies of all my scripts sometime...)
When things are slower the small monitor often contains the live feed from the space station.
I don’t know how common this is, but with a dual-monitor setup I tend to have one in landscape and one in portrait. The portrait monitor is good for things like documents, or other “long” windows like log files and barfy terminal output. The landscape monitor is good for everything that’s designed to operate in that aspect ratio (like web stuff).
More generally, there’s usually something I’m reading and something I’m working on, and I’ll read from one monitor, while working on whatever is in the other.
At work I make use of four Gnome workspaces: one which has distracting things like email and project management gubbins; one active work-dev workspace; one self-development-dev workspace; and one where I stick all the applications and terminals that I don’t actively need to look at, but won’t run minimised/headlessly for one reason or another.
If using multiple screens at work made you more productive, care to give an example or two what do you put on one and the other and how they interact? Perhaps also negatives, in what situations that doesn’t help?
Hypothesis: they only work with transformation type work e.g. translation where you read a document in one and translate in another, or read a spec in one and write code to implement it in another or at any rate the output you generate is strongly dependent on an input that you need to keep referring to.
I actually borrowed a TV as a second screen because I need to re-create the layouts of document reports from an old accounting software in a new. So it is handy to have the example on the TV while I work on the new one. Of course a printout on a music-stand would work just as well...
At work:
Software development: text editors (or IDE) on one screen, terminal/command-prompt window(s) for building, running tests, etc., on another.
Exploratory work in MATLAB: editor(s) and MATLAB figure windows (plots, images, …) on one screen, MATLAB command window on another.
I use virtual desktops as well as multiple monitors, so things like email and web browser are over in another universe and less distracting. (This does have the downside that when I’m, say, replying to something on Less Wrong, my work is over in another universe and less distracting.) So are other things (e.g., documents being written, to-do lists, etc.).
Of course things may get moved around; e.g., if I’m writing a document based on some technical exploration then I may want a word processor coexisting with MATLAB and a web browser.
At home: email on one monitor, web browser on another. (And all kinds of other things on other virtual desktops.)
Hm, so we have two cases now, thanks:
Read on S1 → think → write on S2
Write on S1, execute / do other things with what is written on S2
Third case, such as web browser and email does not sound that useful to me, but it at least forces you to move your neck which is actually good, lower chance if getting stiff and painful from staring ahead unmoving for hours. Actually I wonder if from this angle, encouraging motion, we should put another one on the floor, one on the ceiling :) If neither money nor work productivity was a huge issue, the most healthy setup would be robotic arms rearranging screens around you every few minutes in 3D, encouraging regular movement along all axes.
Sometimes useful: e.g. get email saying “hey, look at this interesting thing on the web”, or “could you please do X” where X requires buying something online. Or see something interesting on the web and send an email to a friend about it. But yeah, it’s not hugely valuable. (I have two monitors on my home machine because sometimes I do more serious things on it and they’re useful then. And because there was a spare monitor going cheap so I thought I might as well.)
If money and productivity were that little an issue, why would you be sat at this contraption in the first place?
Good question. Actually—it might not even reduce productivity. Suppose you put a terminal where you run commands on the average every ten minutes on one such screen positioned on a fully 3D positionable robotic arm. You lose maybe 2 seconds finding out if this time is it is over your left shoulder or up right on the ceiling. But the improved blood flow from the movement could improve your cognitive skills and maybe being forced into a 3D all-around situational awareness “awakens the ancestral hunter” ie.e. improves awareness, focus and concentration. A good example is driving a car. It tends to put me in a focused mode.
But, lacking that, at least having some neck movement between screens must be a good thing.
Have you read Stephenson’s REAMDE? It describes in detail an interesting working setup… :-)
I have 2 desks in my office, both with multiple screen layouts. Your question made me think about how I use them and it comes down to the task I am performing.
Like others, when I am programming I typically have an IDE where I am doing work on one and a reference open on another. When doing web development my third monitor usually has a browser where I can immediately refresh my work to see results, for other development it may be a virtual machine or remote desktop that I am logged into.
When I am doing academic work, I often have EndNote (reference manager) on one monitor, the document I am writing on another and the documents I am finding / reading on the third.
Since both my desks are next to each other, I often “borrow” a monitor from the other setup to keep communication windows open (Skype, Lync, Hangouts, #Slack etc.) This allows me to keep in touch with coworkers and colleagues without having to flip windows every time I get a message.
So I would say there are three purposes identified:
Active Work
Reference Material
Communication
I put source code/IDE/logging output in one, and the program I’m running in the other, particularly when debugging a program; running in debug mode or watching logs is simpler.
I also put remote desktops in a separate screen, often copying the contents of configuration files over as text, as I don’t generally get the ability to drag files directly into environments (people who prevent direct copying of files or dragging and dropping, your security is getting in the way without providing any security—Base64 encoding exists).
Otherwise I will have social applications open in one (e-mail application, chats with clients, etc), and my actual work in the other.
I of course do much of the “work on A, reference on B” that others have talked about—the IDE open on one screen and the documentation open on the other—but it’s also worth pointing out the cases where there are multiple pieces of reference material that I’m trying to collide somehow, and having both of them open simultaneously is obviously incredible useful.
The typical theme is reference material on one screen, and working material on the other screen. The equivalent of having all your reference material open on your desk so you are not flipping back an forth through notes.
Edit: Read The Intelligent Use of Space by David Kirsh as recommended by this LessWrong post.
I work with multiple screens and I estimate that I save between 20 minutes and one hour per day in comparison to using only one. I do financial work and examples would be: Quickbooks open on one screen and an internet bank account open on the other; or the account open on one page and some financial pdf open on the other; or similar things.
So read on screen 1-> thought and transformational work → write on screen 2?
3 monitors, 1 for a browser, 1 for IDE, 1 for misc stuff, like watching syslog messages, file manager, etc.
One screen (small square monitor I found for free) is often filled up with my matlab data files and matlab command window. The other (large) contains some combination of figures generated by my matlab scripts from my yeast data (constantly popping in and out), analysis I am writing, and scripts I am editing.
(I should really map out the dependencies of all my scripts sometime...)
When things are slower the small monitor often contains the live feed from the space station.
I don’t know how common this is, but with a dual-monitor setup I tend to have one in landscape and one in portrait. The portrait monitor is good for things like documents, or other “long” windows like log files and barfy terminal output. The landscape monitor is good for everything that’s designed to operate in that aspect ratio (like web stuff).
More generally, there’s usually something I’m reading and something I’m working on, and I’ll read from one monitor, while working on whatever is in the other.
At work I make use of four Gnome workspaces: one which has distracting things like email and project management gubbins; one active work-dev workspace; one self-development-dev workspace; and one where I stick all the applications and terminals that I don’t actively need to look at, but won’t run minimised/headlessly for one reason or another.