The most surprisingly useful thing I ever added to a workspace was actually a second screen. Even with a Virtual Desktop Manager, having a second (in this case, smaller) screen on one side allows for more modularity in my work environment. My workflow consists primarily of two different programs that give different access modes for the same database [1], and it is unutterably useful to be able to essentially fullscreen both of them.
Less surprising but far more useful: macros. I probably save myself 1-3 hours of tedium each workday by having automated many small, redundant tasks. I firmly assert that humans should never be forced to count anything that is presented on a computer screen. Data parsing isn’t all that hard (even easier if the parser can access the database layer, not just a report), and there is simply no excuse for tech having never written these programs themselves!
[1] This is a terrible paradigm: I tend to think of them as “Look” and “Touch”, and a fair number of my macros exist only to allow me to use the two in a more integrated way.
The most surprisingly useful thing I ever added to a workspace was actually a second screen. Even with a Virtual Desktop Manager, having a second (in this case, smaller) screen on one side allows for more modularity in my work environment. My workflow consists primarily of two different programs that give different access modes for the same database [1], and it is unutterably useful to be able to essentially fullscreen both of them.
Less surprising but far more useful: macros. I probably save myself 1-3 hours of tedium each workday by having automated many small, redundant tasks. I firmly assert that humans should never be forced to count anything that is presented on a computer screen. Data parsing isn’t all that hard (even easier if the parser can access the database layer, not just a report), and there is simply no excuse for tech having never written these programs themselves!
[1] This is a terrible paradigm: I tend to think of them as “Look” and “Touch”, and a fair number of my macros exist only to allow me to use the two in a more integrated way.