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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?"
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.
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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!"
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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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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.
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.
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.
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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I disagree. My experiences working in both the public and private sectors have been almost identical to the parent poster's. However, the government agency I worked for was in no position to just "print more money". Our annual budget was determined by legislators. And we had to produce value or our budget would get sharply reduced. The bottom line was very closely watched.
It's tempting to think of the government as being some monolithic entity, but it isn't.
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders.