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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?"
If you merely spend five additional minutes on work each day that you would have had to spend on shuffling windows around, the investment in an additional monitor will pay for itself within weeks.
After a bit of Googlin':
:)
Two Screens Are Better Than One
The best part is that it was done by Slashdot's nemesis.
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.
At my previous job I was also using 2 monitors, which definitely made me more productive as I could more easily compare information on different screens.
At my current job I only have 1 monitor and it took me a while to get used to it again. I would ask for a second screen but I already know the answer... "No, because otherwise everyone would want a second screen."
While on my departement, everyone would be better of with having a second screen, the average amount of windows open at the same time is at least 10. It would definitely increase productivity but explaining this to management who at most have their e-mail and text processor open is a lost cause I fear. Well, at least at home I have 2 screens to enjoy.
Also, on a related note, I found synergy to be an amazing tool when using multiple computers at the same time. It allows you to share the same mouse and keyboard between multiple computers by sending the signal over the network and it behaves just as if you had multiple screens on 1 computer (move between screens by going to the side of the screen). I haven't used it for a while though because I didn't have to work on multiple computers at the same time. But if you are, definitely check it out!
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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.
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.
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.
I don't agree. I use two monitors AND virtual desktops. It's much more productive to be able to refer to things on one display while you are working on the other. While virtual desktops are handy for some things, such as working on separate projects, they are not a replacement for two monitors. When I'm on my laptop (single screen obviously) I find myself constantly flipping desktops, min/maxing windows, etc. which is annoying. A single monitor can be as productive as two if it's huge, like one of those 30" displays. Even then, my two 21" flat panels give me more physical display area for a fraction of the price of the 30" displays. My two LCDs also use less energy than one crt, and that minimal electricity usage is made up for in increased productivity.
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...
You're not really productive until you have seven flatscreens suspended around your desk. Only then can you build a 3D virus that will help you break through the firewall of that 1024-bit encryption.
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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.
Try the links here: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=d ual+monitor+productivity+study
You'll even get a Slashdot article linking to a study done on it:
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/1 0/09/137232&mode=flat&tid=137&tid=196
See, that wasn't hard...
If you have to look at output while editing anything two monitors tends to be more effective.
I actually started using a dual head setup years ago (think pre-AGP days) when I had two PCI cards pushing monitors and Windows 2000 had just finally gotten a semi-automatic way to span them. And I've never gone back.
You'd think "ALT-tab" wouldn't be such an effort... until you don't have to do it.
My wife made fun of it, until I upgraded my CRTs to 19" LCD. Giving me a spare CRT to hook up to the second video port on her nVidia card. Then she found the ability to have research and documentation up on one screen, and whatever she was working on on the other. She's also never gone back.
At my work they have been moving us to Thinkpads for almost all of our production network boxes (test racks are a different matter). They got us docking stations with monitors for when we were in the office. Then I realized instead of that I could use the laptops screen as primary and the docking station screen as a second monitor. On top of that the LCD's they got for us were some nice Dell model that you can rotate to portrait mode. You don't want to know how much faster and easier is it to scan a dual column diff when you have portrait mode...
From a money perspective, if a second LCD monitor costs your company $150, and you make $40 an hour all it has to do to pay for itself in a year is save you 3 hours and 45 minutes. Over a 200 day work year.... Meaning about 1 minute and 12 seconds a day and it pays for itself.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Bean counters will be bean counters. Use ignorance to battle ignorance.
Put a label on the monitor saying "Do Not Inventory". And sign the note illegibly.
The bean counters will either ignore the monitor, which you want. Or they will count the monitor. If they count the monitor, then put the monitor in an empty cube, and make it look like it is connected to a computer. If there is no name on the empty cube, make a name plate for the cube. The name on the plate must be "M T Box", and explain to your cow-orkers that the cube is being held for the new Chinese intern. If there is no empty cube, get a keyboard, and make it look like there are two people working in your cube. Explain that you have to share your cube with the new Mexican intern named No-Say Yama...
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
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.
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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Superglue the frames together, use black electrical tape, to go around both frames so it looks like one unit. Then remove one of the asset tags if there is on.
Set back and smile.
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?
I think he wants more than just his word to back him up.
The best thing he can do is set the manager up with a second monitor so he can see the difference. I am an avid multi monitor user. Friends and family that use my machines have gone to the same set up on there machines. At work, I did the same as this guy and eventual converted the entire department. All but one person (the new guy) now have 2 monitors.
now im up to 4 monitors. I wanted 3, but it was just as easy to do 4 as it was 3. If I had to make a cut, i would drop one. But nobody else is willing to give up there set ups.
If you can't convert others, at the very least mention the advantages now before the audit gets to your monitor. Be proactive at telling your supervisor that its needed before the auditor tells him its not needed.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
I still prefer to think that we just haven't found yet that solution that sucks less, and we should keep thinking on.