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Using Two Monitors Makes You More Productive?
Double Vision asks: "In my job, I work with several software applications at once. I find that constantly switching back and forth wastes a tremendous amount of time and causes me to lose focus. My video card supports two monitors, so I found a discarded monitor in my office and hooked it up. This has made it much easier to do my job. However, we are getting ready to go through an equipment audit, which means I will likely lose my additional monitor unless I can justify keeping it. How can I make this case? Is anyone aware of studies that support my claim that two monitors makes me more productive?"
I had two monitors on my desk for a long time. One eventually got bad enough they replaced it with a flat panel. The new panel was so good that I couldn't use the remaining CRT (and also, my eyes were fucked as a result of the shitty old CRT they wouldn't replace sooner).
Long story short, I ditched the second CRT and they wouldn't replace it. My productivity dropped enormously. I actually found it most beneficial to have email, a browser or some documentation for the toolkits I was using open in fullscreen on the second display. It made finding a reference a simply matter of glancing across rather than bringing up another window, losing the context of what I was doing then having to do the shuffle back and forward.
Not only that, but I save on printing because I can keep things open on the second screen for reference like the output of a program working on. The same applies to anyone who is expected to multi-task at work though. Two screens are better than one unless the one screen is a 30" high resolution panel.
I don't know how anyone wrote software back in the days before dual high resolution screens. It's a time consuming chore, requiring a number of dead tree tomes open on one's desk and constant shuffling about.
I drink to make other people interesting!
At my job we had a consultant that worked on the desk behind mine. After he left his computer area was left abandoned, and actually the desk and other parts of it were to go to me for my work area (for some reason my boss felt I needed both a desk and a "writing table"). Anyway, they didn't seem to have any purpose for the computer and monitor on the desk when I asked my supervisor, so I hooked up that second monitor to my machine.
I of course told my supervisor about this, who after hearing the explanation of it thought it was actually a good idea. All I needed to do was write up a justification on why I needed a second monitor, and they let me have it. Justification isn't really that hard, especially if you're a programmer. The ability to have your IDE or editor or whatnot on one screen while viewing the output, documentation, or APIs on another is incredibly useful, and can speed up your work significantly. I'd go and say something like that to whatever supervisor or person in charge of equipment before they got to looking at the equipment at your desk.
Interestingly, after I got my second monitor, a coworker friend of mine came to my desk from the building across the street and saw the setup and was extremely jealous. He ended up finding a spare monitor near his desk for his own setup. After that, all of the people near his desk saw his setup and wanted it to. We actually ended up having some ITS meetings where enough people brought up the idea of dual-monitors that it's now a standard request for people to get with minimal justification. So who knows, maybe you'll start a trend like what happened for me.
Dirt cheap compared to the salaries
That really depends on where you work; there are a lot of shitbox companies around there that pay the minimum amount to put food on the programmer's table. A lot of managers don't think of "if we spend this we'll save twice that" they think "if we spend this we immediately reduce the bottom line by the same amount, fuck that!"
I drink to make other people interesting!
I supposed you don't need to look at data sheets while you program. Sure, you don't need to see the IDE and the datasheet at the same time, but just switching between the two fullscreen apps on a single monitor costs you more than enough time, since you lose track of what was in the old window and need to orient yourself in the new window.
Wrong, when audited, you can't compare a hidden benefit with a visible cost, no matter how positive it might eventually be.
An old french playwritter, Molière, has one of its characters say it is better to die according to the medecine than to live against it. You can also check todays post about outsourcing for more examples.
If your salary is $50 an hour, then every second you spend on unproductive things becomes a very visible cost, especially if those seconds add up.
If the bean-counters at the company don't see that, they're effectively incompetent. Which usually points to bad prospects for the future of the company.
Well, that's the bad thing about capitalism today - it's been replaced by blind greed and short-term thinking. The term "investment" (the basis of all capital) is pretty much forgotten. Instead, "investing" money is considered "spending" it.
But what about those of us whose work does involve seeing more things at the same time?
At work, a lot of us have been picking up older screens to use as second monitors over the past year or so. This was mostly luck, rather than a management decision: someone noticed that the standard-issue graphics cards in one generation of PCs we had included two output ports, and tried it out with an old 17" CRT that was otherwise sitting idle.
Among other times this is useful for us in our everyday work:
I could list many more, but those are fairly typical examples of things we do a lot during the course of our development jobs. It's not hard to imagine applications either: anything involving applications with lots of toolbars and such (graphics, CAD) must be a good candidate.
I don't have any quantitative data, but having made the switch myself a few months ago, I definitely spend a lot less time messing around changing windows and arranging desktops than I used to. The only annoyance is that I sometimes switch to look at the other screen without making the application there active, and then start typing. :-/
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's not the employees job to throw money at the company he works for. Unless doing something like that has benefits for you (like not getting carpal tunnel syndrome by using your own mouse), don't do it.
If the bean-counters are too stupid to invest in good working equipment, don't bail them out.
My work got all of the 50ish developers and 50ish other staff dual LCD screens (replacing the CRT or adding to the already present LCD). While I can only offer anecdotal evidence, it does come in the form of 100ish people having nothing but positive things to say about the change. It just feels more natural... it lets you free up some of your internal buffer and brain power from 'remembering'. It lets us have the IDE on one screen and the Database on the other (no more switching back and forth to check the spelling)... or the help documents open and accessible... or the debugger and the system.
Two of the more definitive benefits: First in the fact that we can work in any resolution we want, but have to develop for a 1024x768 target system. This means we can set the second monitor up with that hideous resolution to make sure the GUIs/websites/whatever look good without having to constantly readjust the resolution (very good if you are doing web work and can refresh with a click of one button). Second in the fact that we use Remote Desktop to connect to other systems (App/DB servers), so being able to put the app system on one screen of the workstation, we can install and test the system without ever having to touch the Alt key. It also speeds up debugging to have the workstation and DB next to each other so that you can watch changes as they happen. Lastly, and again this is purely anecdotal, I feel more integrated with the work now. I don't have to context switch nearly as often, thus taking my mind off of what I'm doing in order to alt-tab to the right program (possibly taking a dozen seconds if I have too many things open and have to search for the damned thing I need). It just feels more natural... it lets you free up some of your internal buffer and brain power from 'remembering'.
Murphy's Paradox... the more you plan for success, the more avenues there are for failure.
Well, say it takes 5 seconds to switch between applications. Say you do that 10 times an hour. Add in the information that you need to see in one application vs another, with, say, 60 seconds of time to do so, which happens 4 times a day. That's 640 seconds per day, or an additional 10 minutes of productivity. With a cheap CRT costing 50 bucks, the productivity gain on the above lightest-case scenario pays for itself in the first week easily.
And if they still won't let you have it, just pick one up off the street and bring it in from home. Mark it as personal hardware, and tell the bean counters to sod off.
The ______ Agenda
It kinda goes without saying that having 2 monitors when you only really need one is a waste.
An advantage of 2 physical displays is that instead of printing a design spec or whatever to a printer, you can just open it up in the second display and start coding. I'm not sure how many pages you'd have to not print to offset the manufacture and running costs of a second monitor though...
1) Many OSes don't tile windows well. To have two windows properly tiled on a single monitor, you need to minimize everything but those windows and then choose to tile all nonminimized windows. (At least this is my experience with Windows XP) It's faster to just drag one app to your second monitor and maximize it.
:(
2) The aspect ratio of a single 16:9 screen doesn't fit two 4:3 screens well. While for editing Word documents this is not a bad thing (and could be good in fact), for editing PowerPoint documents, images, and Excel spreadsheets, dual 4:3 is better.
3) Moderate sized 4:3 flat panel displays cost a fraction of the price of an Apple 30" display. The Apple 30" display is $1500-2000, 19" 4:3 displays are $200-250 each.
4) Most workers already have their first monitor. Adding a second is cheaper than chucking it and buying a large widescreen, even if that large widescreen were remotely competitive for these purposes with dual 19s in price.
I have a second monitor in my cube, but it's an old beat-up CRT and I don't have the desk space to use it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Speaking as someone currently using two 17" monitors, I think two monitors is better.
1. 30" monitors cost a *lot* more than two 17" monitors. Like, £1000 more.
2. 2560x1600 isn't as good as 3200x1200, IMO. The 30" monitor is too tall, I prefer something wider and flatter.
3. My monitors are arranged to surround me, rather than forming a flat panel. This means I'm looking at them close to straight whether I'm looking in the middle or either edge. With a single big monitor, I'd have to have them flat, and would be viewing them significantly off-straight at the edges.
4. With multiple monitors, software can be manipulated easily to take up exactly half of the display (using the maximize buttons), which is useful when you are using exactly 2 applications -- something I do regularly (e.g. IDE for development and web browser for reference). I don't believe achieving this is easy with a single large display.
Don't make it a hidden benefit. Quantify how much time it saves, you don't need big numbers. Can you demonstrate a 5 minute per day benefit? (10 seconds a windows switch, thats just 30 switches a day). Thats 100 minutes a month. In 6 months, thats 600 minutes, or 10 hours. Now your company almost certainly has an internal billing rate they use when considering your time (even better if they have an external rate), its likely at least 2x your current salary (it costs to hire you, house you, train you, etc. You are an expensive asset). Lets say you are a young average programmer, thats still a $50/hour internal billing rate. So long as your second monitor costs less than $500, it pays for itself in 6 months.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I do web development for a living, and I find that having three monitors works the best for me. I have the web browsers on the left, all of my code in the middle, and my documentation on the right. No need to waste time alt+tabbing around, switching desktops, etc., etc. I find it to be very helpful. I think that four would be overkill, though.
I would imagine that for any kind of development, two is better than one. For some, three may or may not be as useful, but as I said above, I like three.
Love sees no species.
My guess is that you've simply conflated two issues. You've forgotten that any employee on a salary will simply be expected to put in overtime to compensate for any inefficiencies. It costs the company exactly $0.00 for a salaried employee to simply "waste" those precious extra seconds that you claim will add up. They add up to nothing but more "free" hours put in by our protagonist for the company served. If the bean-counters at the company don't see that, they're effectively incompetent. Which usually points to bad prospects for the future of the company. The bean-counters know exactly what they're doing. They're extracting more value (your time) from you at no cost. That free productivity (salaried--unpaid to the employee--overtime) looks great on the balance sheet, compared to the price of an extra monitor. If you can't see that, I think you might need to re-evaluate the target of your insults.
Well, if this strategy weren't the most successful, then the long-term-thinking companies would win out in the end, no? Capitalism won't allow an inefficient system to survive in a competitive marketplace.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
IBM survives, and thrives.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Sure, most I.T. workers are on salary ... but even the "tightest" company has to realize that you can only ask people to work so much overtime before they become disgruntled and quit. (And often, before it even goes that far, they become extremely unproductive, because they're upset with the working conditions - and do their best to slack off, to compensate for the long hours they're expected to pull.)
There's really no such thing as "free productivity". Even if it's "standard practice" to squeeze 10 hour days from your salaried workers vs. 8 hour days, those 2 extra hours you demand from each of them is getting chewed away at by unproductive things (like a user shuffling around windows and constantly resizing things, due to lack of monitor screen space), if you don't address those problems and correct them.
yep. It's a good idea. It would also be neat to have something like mouse gestures so that you could "throw" a window to the left-half of the screen or the right-half or whatever.
It's called being "Penny-wise and Pound-foolish".
We've all worked for "those" people at some point.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yes, that is exactly right, all things being equal and fair. That is hardly the case, often large companies maintain their market share not through capitalism but through good old fashion organized crime (Enron), or through good old fashion communism (state enforced monopolies, such as telcoms). What US is becoming is a Corporatocracy, which is just soviet style communism with a better marketing department.
Why on $deity's $coloured earth should an employee be subsidising his employer?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not to mention that this isn't a competitive marketplace.
And lets not disregard the fact that the effectiveness of a competitive marketplace is tied to the capacity of the public to make informed decisions.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The bean-counters know exactly what they're doing. They're extracting more value (your time) from you at no cost.
Skimping on tools or environment spending does have a measurable impact on the bottom line, if it increases the turnover rate. Replacing a knowledge worker costs one to two times their salary (look at some of these search results).
Before praising the bean counters, ask them if they know what the company's turnover rate is for those jobs, and how that compares to the average for their competition. If they don't know those numbers, they aren't counting all the relevant beans.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Now that's quite a broad generalization.
I'm an IT contractor, and I make it a point to draw my customer's attention to inefficiencies in my work environment. Why? Because it's in my best interests to maximize my productivity.
First of all, I truly enjoy my work, and working efficiently increases my personal satisfaction with the job at hand. It also allows me to proceed to the next interesting challenge that much sooner.
More importantly though, the more productive I am, the happier my customer is. In a business where my personal reputation is what gets me the next contract and supports my hourly rate, a happy customer becomes an asset I can take directly to the bank.
It's very hard to argue that the bulk of the US economy is centrally-administered.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I tried this line of reasoning once, but on a much larger scale. I proved that an automated system could save hours of work each day. Adding in the hourly equivilent of the effected employees salaries, I could show a cost savings in the tens of thousands of dollars annually.
My response was this: "If we can't fire someone or cut someone's pay, it doesn't save any money". It made me furious, how could the reject the logic behind my math? Only later did I come to understand their reasoning: All the work that needed to be done was being done for what they are paying the employees. Taking away work to be done, without taking away pay going to the employees would not save money.
So to justify your second monitor you either have to show a real money reduction of cost, or a real money increase in revenue. Your efficiency is your responsibility, not the company's responsibility. After all, why should they pay more tomorrow get you to do the same job you did yesterday? Its often easer to replace you with someone more efficient at the same cost, than to increase your cost to make you more efficient.
As an aside, whenever I make proposals for automating processes now, I don't calculate how much work I reduce, or how much more efficient I can make it, I calculate how much revenue they are missing out on because their processes can't handle the extra work, then show them how automation would let them handle it, and therefore gain the extra revenue.
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Well, if this strategy weren't the most successful, then the long-term-thinking companies would win out in the end, no? Capitalism won't allow an inefficient system to survive in a competitive marketplace.
In the long term yes, at least in theory (and I'm sure others will point out problems with that theory, as they are ample). In the short term, anything goes, even in the theoretical.
It takes millions of years for evolution to find an "optimal" solution, and even then it isn't necessarily optimal, just "good enough for the environment". And if one species consumes all of the resources due to short term 'thinking' as it were, then another species in the same ecosystem that only consumes in moderation so as to maintain balance will still die.
Right now the environment rewards short-term thinkers. Companies have adapted to it. Long-term thinking requires an (indeterminate) long time to pay off and thus prove itself superior. If the short-term thinking of most companies destroys the economy, then the long-term thinkers may still die, and then who do you say was superior?
It's not like the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith reaches down from the sky and bitch-slaps any organization that performs an economically sub-optimal action. The theory says that in the limit an optimal balance will be reached, but in the meantime (as in what's happening "now" whenver "now" may be) could be wildly stupid and inefficient and still win.
The enemies of Democracy are
The beauty of capitalism is its relationship with evolution... in capitalism, only the most resilient business models will survive over the long term. Hopefully that will result in the survival and growth of companies that have intelligent management and competent staff (cough, cough, Google etc). Unfortunately, for every company that survives long-term, there will probably be five or ten that burn themselves out through incompetence. The trick is to find a job with a company that has a chance for long-term survival. Either that or join a budding supernova, IPO, cash out, and run away before the implosion hits.
Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
In the long run, yes. But in the short run huge corporations crash and burn, glutting the market with unemployed. In the long run they'll usually get new jobs, but in the meanwhile some people will run into problems like a medical emergency, drown in bills, lose their house, and be forced to declare bankruptcy. People who relied on a pension from their business will find what they were promised reduced or eliminated. Shareholders who had been mislead have part of their portfolio reduced to nothing. In the short run a business can boost profits by turning as many costs into externalities as possible: polluting, overfishing, and the like.
Meanwhile, the CEOs, presidents, and other upper management made lots of money in direct salary, bonuses for raising the stock price in the short term, and profit some selling their own stock while it was artificially boosted. And since they made out just fine, there is incentive for others to follow in their footsteps, making short-sighted decisions for short term gain that doom other companies in the long run.
For those companies that do have long term thinking, they're penalized by the stock market and other potential investors because they don't look as successful in the short term. If a potential investor waits to see a company's long term work, it could easily be thirty years later and the entire management team has changed, so it's still not a reliable indicator. (The fall of once reliable Hewlett-Packard comes to mine.)
The invisible hand isn't full of magical pixie dust that just makes everything work. Primarily because participants in capitalism have deeply imperfect information, there are large windows of opportunity for abuse. In the long run capitalism tends to sort things out; but in the meanwhile new abusers have arisen and created new problems.
Capitalism sucks. But like a cockroach you can't eliminate it. And no matter how much it sucks, the other options suck more.
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He should just hide the monitor in a box and stick it in the dark corner of his cube. The company can't audit what they can't see. This technique worked successfully at several companies I worked for.
Why should they care if you are using an "abandoned" monitor? I started using an "abandoned" monitor at work after running dual-head at home... (I brought in my own 2nd video card to drive it) Since then all systems we buy come with dual-head support on the video cards. I eventually replaced the "abandoned" crt with one of the new 1600x1200 LCD monitors... It started with just myself... Less than 2 yrs later EVERY developer except one in our office is running dual-head. You could not drag us back to single monitor kicking and screaming... (We would just bring in our own second monitor and/or video card at our own expense...)
Your best bet is to point out that using the "abandoned" monitor is providing improved productivity at "no additional cost" to the organization since the 2nd monitor was collecting dust in the corner till you put it to good use... Let them know that if they find someone else that "needs" your monitor and does not have one that you will readily give it up... (as long as they allow you to bring in your own 2nd monitor from home to use so you do not lose productivity. You can readily buy used 20" CRTs for less than $40 these days...)
If they ask you to "prove" increased productivity due to dual-monitors try flipping the tables on them. Tell them as far as you know there have not been any studies done on the improved productivity but you have noticed the improved productivity yourself and you doubt they will EVER find ANYONE who has used dual monitors for more than 2 weeks that claims there is no increased productivity.
In theory, he shouldn't need to spend an hour justiying the second monitor. The auditing staff should understand how additional computer equipment changes productivity, or at least be competent enough to comprehend even a basic justification for the additional equipment.
The fact that the question was raised indicates that the questioner fears that the auditors are incompetent. There are two obvious reasons to explain this incompetence:
In a related scenario, the company isn't transparent enough for the questioner to understand the process behind an audit. Due to his ignorance, he feels it necessary to defend his equipment. In this scenario, the company should either become more transparent or, if it is already transparent, inform the questioner of such transparency. Regardless of which of these explanations fits his circumstances, he is justified in spending some time "defending his equipment", as the situation was created by business policy, at some level or another.
That said, he should also go a step farther. The cases illustrated above all result from an inefficiency in business policy. Rather than resolve only the fallout of this mechanism (e.g. defend his monitor), he should note the problem as he sees it and recommend a solution to whichever departments are involved. This strengthens his argument rhetorically if done properly: he becomes portrayed as a supporter of the system, who is only interested in the "best" for the company. This introduces a political danger, however. If he doesn't present his argument properly (for instance, say he takes an aggressive stance), then his life may get more difficult. The company may perceive his help as a threat, and take away his monitor out of spite.
This discourse is irrelevant, of course, if the questioner justifies his behavior because he's a selfish ass. ;)
Yes, that is exactly right, all things being equal and fair. That is hardly the case, often large companies maintain their market share not through capitalism but through good old fashion organized crime (Enron), or through good old fashion communism (state enforced monopolies, such as telcoms). What US is becoming is a Corporatocracy, which is just soviet style communism with a better marketing department.
Instead of Corporatocracy I think "Corporate Aristocracy", which Thomas Jefferson warned of, works better. He saw corporations as one of three threats to natural rights, the other two being government and organized religion.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Um that is a problem with humanity, not capitalism. I am entirely confident that greed affects other economic forms as well. For example, before taking greed (and a general desire to have more than others) into account, socialism seems like the nirvana of economic systems.Well, that's the bad thing about capitalism today - it's been replaced by blind greed and short-term thinking.
I think the real problem there is greed caused by flaws in the management structure of these companies. Being out of touch with your employees and lacking the foresight to understand how to increase productivity are marks of POOR MANAGEMENT. This is why Google and the like are nice places to work. They're just as greedy and corporate as anybody else, but having lots of engineers sprinkled through the management hierarchy leads to an enjoyable work place. Including dual big-ass wide screen monitors for all, a choice of operating systems, and tons of "distractions" like pianos, games and what not... Just get your work done and you can play all you want!!
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I still prefer to think that we just haven't found yet that solution that sucks less, and we should keep thinking on.
"Communism is in theory more efficient but doesn't work" This means that you need a better theory. The theory that says that Communism is more efficient is wrong, just like the theory that says the sun revolves around the earth. The purpose of any theory is to be able to make predictions about the future. There is actually a second basic flaw to Communism in addition to the one you mentioned. It is the mistake of central planning. It was theorized that having a small body of people analyzing the data and determining what to make, where to make it, etc, would be more efficient than allowing that decision to be made on a distributed basis. This turned out to be wrong, every attempt at centralized planning has failed. It turns out there are too many variables for any small group to figure out the best distribution system. Capitalism works because it has a mechanism for distributed decision making. The problem isn't with Capitalism, the problem is with people.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Here are some advantages of one approach against the other:
* better organization and looking at different (two) applications at the same time: dual monitors
* GUI development: wide screen monitor
* side bars, additional content: wide screen monitor (and a window manager app)
* 100 programs open at the same time: dual monitors (and multiple desktops)
* multimedia (video/games): wide screen monitor
* internet browsing: dual monitors
* email: dual monitors
At work I have significant speedups for dual monitors. But then I am creating applications where I have to debug both the client and the server at the same time. Also, when programming it is really good to have documentation next to the code. With a good IDE it is also possible to have the debug and code perspectives on different screens (e.g. Eclipse handles this *really* well). I would always go for dual monitors at work if I had the choice. Using two 17" monitors is not that expensive, with 19" you get bigger letters, but most of them are 1280x1024, just like the 17" - so only go for 19" if the price difference is neglectible.
I feel that my speedup is between 5-10% easily. So the company started saving money in about, oh, two weeks time, tops.
If you have a choice in choosing the flat screens for work:
* 4:3 aspect ratio (two flat screens does not work well, too big a turning angle for your head/eyes)
* anti-glare
* 170 degrees looking angle (if you have a rotating screen, this becomes *really* important)
* DVI is nice (better colors, less chance of syncing problems, needs a - passive - video card with dual DVI output)
* height adjustable, tiltable (forget about rotation and pivoting the screen - you won't use it)
* USB hubs are nice (but don't work well in combination with a rotating screen)
* refresh rate is not important anymore
At home I am used to watch video and play games, so I went for the wide screen. Some websites do look a bit weird on 1680 pixels wide though.