No, you're using the computer wrong. See, you should use a tiling window manager with several workspaces and shortcuts without having to look at your keyboard, e.g. Meta+4 to go to workspace 4 where you have your chat apps.
If I were to commit to a tiling WM I think I'd have to replace my main monitor with a 4k TV large enough to run at 1x UI scale without the UI elements being tiny so each window gets the virtual real estate required without effectively making the "tiling" part of the tiling WM moot by maximizing every window.
This probably boils down to the type of programs one uses though… someone living in chromeless text editors and terminals all day will probably fare better with tiling than someone who spends all their time in IDEs, graphics editors, and web browsers.
The tiling part is just there to making your windows manageable without the mouse and in a predictable way. Out of my 5 preassigned workspaces, 3 are fullscreen windows, 1 is split in 2, and 1 is split in 3 usually.
When I want a new program running big, then I either 1) close and make space in some workspace I'm not using right now, 2) send it to one of the empty "non-preassigned" spaces, or 3) change the current space layout into "all windows fullscreen" temporarily (with the new window on front, obviously).
For example mnemonic "M" for mail/email, so my xmonad.hs has something like:
, ((mod3Mask, xK_m), raiseNextMaybe (spawn "/usr/bin/someemailprog") (className =? "Someemailprog"))
Personally, my mail program is usually on desktop 1, but some of the other program, like Web browser, I move between desktops as needed for tasks. Hitting modifier+W always gets to it.
You arrive to your chat workspace, your works slack side by side with your favorite irc and matrix clients, all positioned and scaled perfectly every time. Adding more / fewer / swapping apps in is just a matter of invocation, and there the new configuration sits waiting.
The concept is expanded greatly. Shoutout to i3 and xmonad, for my personal setups.
That's basically what I do. A tiling WM and then one modifier key (Super in my case but whatever) and then keys to go to any workspace/virtual desktop I want.
And most of my workspaces are always organized in exactly the same manner, so I know exactly where is what.
It is a little amusing to see such a dramatic headline supported by the extremely elementary thesis that you should have kbd shortcuts for your favorite applications.
On top of that, numbered shortcuts for arbitrary apps is way worse than using Super+[arbitrary key].
Tiling helps, but I just have a bunch of shortcuts that tile a particular window just so under xfwm4.
You can assign workspaces to different monitors, if I understand the question correctly
I can't overstate how important it is to have a keyboard that groups function keys into "islands" of (generally) 4 so you can touch-type them. An ergonomics consultant once observed that the source of my neck pain was that I looked at the keyboard while typing. As a touch-typist, I found this puzzling—until we realized it was just the function keys. :-)
Btw, LaunchBar (https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html) makes an excellent 2nd-level util for things not common enough to merit a single keychord.
Yabai is my daily driver and I really like it.
That's what I do. I use fluxbox, but even Windows 10 has pretty decent built-in multi-desktop functionality.
Same keybindings.
win+a = app launcher
win+s = search windows
win+m = rename window
win+1-4 = wspace 1-4
shift+win+1-4 move to wspace 1-4
win + q = close window
win + r = reload cwm
Also, if you are a programmer and use non-ASCII punctuation (Spanish, French, German, Nordic):
setxkbmap us -option ctrl:swapcaps -option compose:menu -option compose:rwin
Function keys are faster / more direct for people that do 100% touch typing, right?