Improving Productivity (With Science)

An anonymous reader writes "It's common knowledge that multiple monitors increase productivity, but there isn't actually any research to support that assertion. However, studies have shown that there are a few simple tweaks to the work environment that do increase productivity. Among them: use high temperature light sources and keep office plants."

Comments

Uhhh

[proverbialcow]

I'm pretty sure I would get fired for running a grow house in my office.

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have been fooled by the fictional "heat lamps" mentioned in police bust reports. This is a blatant lie aimed at tricking people into ineffective grows. Cannabis grows fine at room temperature and overheating is a much bigger problem than cold for indoor grows. The less heat, but more light, the better.

The real lights used are high pressure sodium, with a low color temperature for best vegetative growth, and metal halide, with a higher color temperature for best flowering. If somebody is using only one type of light it will be the low color temperature high pressure sodium. Fluorescent lighting is also usable for small scale grows but is less efficient.

Office plant

[SEWilco]

Make sure the office plant has a comfortable chair in his cubicle.

On the contrary

[Arancaytar]

Multiple monitors make it easier to appear productive with less effort.

Re:On the contrary

[hedwards]

I think the issue with the assertion is that it only applies to certain types of work. It's amazingly handy for somebody working on photo manipulation or graphic design to have one monitor showing the whole image and perhaps the toolbars and the other showing just the region that is being worked on.

Likewise it can be really helpful for a receptionist to have an email program going on one monitor and a word processing program going in the other.

With the advent of large monitors, a better solution for the latter would probably be to have a decent utility to split up the main screen, but I've yet to see one that really did a very good job of splitting one monitor into multiple logical monitors. X seems to do the best job, but there's complications there and that doesn't apply to Windows anyways.

They missed one

[sharp3]

#1 improvement to productivity) Closing Slashdot!

Aeron chair didn't work for me

[llZENll]

I actually bought that exact chair as mentioned in the article, with the additional $200 chrome upgrade, about 4 years ago, it was awesome for the first few years, and then I had a huge problem with lower back pain. I went to the doc, tried stretching, muscle relaxers, massages, sleeping differently, it turns out it was the chair, after switching to a $39 Ikea chair http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70133761 my back pain finally went away after a few weeks and has been awesome since. I tried switching back to the Aeron a year ago for a month, but my back started hurting again soon after. The point of my story is just because a chair is expensive or has many adjustments does not mean its the best for you, and you may very well find a very comfortable chair for a lot less.

Re:Aeron chair didn't work for me

[ChienAndalu]

My back hurt until I started hitting the gym and doing muscle strength exercises.

There actually seem to be some studies

[BlackEdder]

Some googling turned up a description of 3 studies (the fourth actually doesn't look at dual monitors) http://www.kevinkane.com/2010/12/4-studies-which-show-that-using-a-second-monitor-can-boost-productivity/ Maybe not high quality research, but they all show an increase in productivity due to a second monitor

Re:6 or 12 monitors for the price of one.

[maxwell demon]

Do they also support looking at one screen while typing on the other?

The article lies.

[tomhudson]

There HAVE been studies that show that multiple monitors increase productivity.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/vibe.aspx

The first study revealed that the users' productivity increased by 9 percent. Further studies showed even greater increases - at times up to 50 percent for tasks such as cutting and pasting. Mary Czerwinski, the VIBE research manager, is excited about her group's discoveries, asking, "If you're able to squeeze 10 percent more productivity out, do you know how much money that will save?"

The article is utter garbage.

Re:The article lies.

[GodfatherofSoul]

You probably made more before the sex change I bet, Tom...I mean Barbara.

Music

[jomama717]

I wish they had done some studies about the effects of music on productivity. I have some of those very nice Bose headphones and by far my most productive hours are spent wearing them.

Any music that I am able to "zone out" to will do, classical, jazz, techno - usually long tracks with many subtle transitions.

Granted I am a programmer, and listening to music while working is perfectly reasonable while it may be totally unacceptable for others.