Ask HN: Productivity-boosting gadgets?

I work in a medium-sized corporate office with lots of different groups in an open floor plan on a single floor. A few of us have brought up what gadgets we could buy/make/use that could boost our productivity in little ways - like the typical NOC overhead display. There's usually lots of opposition within my group to things like this, and here's the short list of reasons:

* We should be monitoring things on our desktops anyway * It's bad for us (politically?) if others see a service is down or alerting * It would be expensive or inefficient to duplicate the monitor(s) needed to allow everyone to see the displays without turning around or craning their necks

I'm more inclined to just do my job efficiently than think about politics or expenses. Even if this display is too "controversial" or nobody wants to fight for it enough, i'm curious what other ways we could increase productivity by employing some other gadget, device, add-on or other thing to help improve efficiency (or just make my life a little easier).