How to increase productivity per square inch of your screen | Hacker News Reader

How to increase productivity per square inch of your screen

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24 pointslegierski30 comments

And how to increase productivity would just be to buy a second monitor. You might increase productivity per square inch by going smaller but you will increase productivity in total if you get a second screen.

I don't buy into any of the arguments for a smaller screen. Depends on what you do and how you do it. If you have trouble managing multiple windows then don't. If you have trouble focusing on your work then you have other issues than a too large display. If you manage to circumvent this by working on a netbook then that's fine, for you. But keep in mind that an netbook can hardly be considered ergonomically decent and my personal opinion is that you perhaps should attack the cause and not the symptoms.

http://earlyandoften.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/justifying-dua...

I constantly hear people say "I'll never accept having just one monitor from now on" after having two for about a week. Same goes for my skeptical father, I just put another screen next to his current on his desk and two weeks later he couldn't live without it. Stories like these are common and you've all heard them since the mid 90's, it is still true today - and there is no point even trying to excuse yourself from buying a second monitor.

I constantly hear people say "I'll never accept having just one monitor from now on" after having two for about a week

Amen.

It's funny how we get used to luxuries.

I'm using 3 monitors, attached to my laptop by a USB video adapter.

I've had this current setup for less than 3 months.

And I feel limited, now, if I try to do serious work when I'm unplugged.

And I pity folk with only a single monitor - my gawd, how do those folks get anything _done_? Might as well ride your dinosaur to work and cook your popcorn in an actual pot on a _stove_.

For some readon I prefer one big screen. But maybe thats just because i never had teo really big screens

Productivity for hackers:

1. At least two large monitors tuned to an accurate and comfortable brightness/contrast ratio/colour balance.

2. Ergonomic high-end chair picked by the person using it, correct desk height, monitor height and other ergonomic configuration for prolonged sitting and typing.

3. Correct lighting to reduce eye strain.

4. Clear desk and plenty of space so there is no clutter in the way.

5. Silence and isolation from distraction. Social activities and team work can occur elsewhere in specifically designed areas.

6. Ergonomic high-end mouse and keyboard picked by the person using them. Spare no expense.

7. Flexibility for developers to change the tools and work environment on an individual basis as they discover their own preferences.

8. Ability for developers to walk away from a problem, do something completely unrelated to work and come back later in a better state of mind to continue. This is similar to (7) - maximum flexibility.

9. Tablet and/or laptop for portable use when a developer decides these tools are better suited for the current task. It can be more productive in the long run to sit outside in the sun or on a comfy couch reading part of a book or technical paper, listing ideas, drawing UI mockups, thinking or clearing the mind.

10. Quality fresh food of multiple varieties available at different proximities (10m, 100m, 1km).

11. An environment filled with smart people and a "hacker friendly culture".

12. Managers that understand their primary role as removing roadblocks rather than micromanaging the project through quantitative measures such as bugs found per line of code.

13. A blue space ship as deemed necessary.

Yes, this is a serious list.

14. An interesting and challenging problem to work on. I can have all the above but if the task at hand is the equivalent of shoveling dirt, I will procrastinate the day away in my fancy chair, clicking my fancy mouse, surfing the web on my triple 30" setup.

It's embarrassing that I missed this crucially important factor.

The only caveat I'd add is that a problem can be interesting, challenging and a dead end.

Few things boost morale better than seeing your hard work pay off in a meaningful way.

To you and the parent: Are you hiring?

I find that I tend to have at least two files open side by side when coding. Maybe it's an OOP thing, but I rarely focus on just one file. Even when coding web stuff, I'll hop between HTML, an associated CSS file, and a separate javascript file all open at the same time so that I can see the interrelationships. I find the cost of context-switching between files too high when I work on a laptop with only enough screen real estate to open 1 file comfortably.

That's exactly the issue I have.

Most of what I've been doing lately is web related, so it's not at all uncommon for me to have a CSS file, a couple Javascript files, an HTML template, and some sort of backend view open all at the same time, working between them concurrently.

I accomplish this with vim split windows, and I use every inch of my 23" screen to do it (with the browser running the site itself on my second monitor).

If I use a smaller screen, I either need to use window splits that are so small, they provide almost no context, or I need to be constantly closing and opening different splits...

Absolutely not

12 inch laptop monitor?

You'll pry my 17 inch or higher "standard" from my cold dead hands. My current work laptop is a 15 inch, and it is in no way big enough for me to work effectively while undocked.

I constantly have 2 IDEs up, a SQL Management Console, as well as something I'm googling to research about what I'm working on. Let alone the occasional things I'll need up, like NHProf, a command console or two, Notepad++, and an RDP window that. That barely works on a 15 inch monitor (and by barely, I mean it doesn't). No way in hell will it work on a 12. You can context switch till the cows come home, but eventually you spend more time switching between windows and applications than you do actually getting work done.

I appreciate the ideas hes putting forth, which are to make more from less and really prioritize what you're putting your screen real estate towards, but 12 inch monitor as your day to day work screen?

That dog won't hunt, Monseigneur

27 inch iMac here.

Left half is vim with an abundance of split and vsplit (ends up being around 8-10 panels). top right half is a testing browser, bottom lower half is reference browser.

Next desktop over is Spotify, which I rarely look at.

Pretty dang productive in my opinion.

I have a 27" TB Display here attached to a 13" MBA. For me, the browser sits in the MBA. On the 27", I have terminal opened (maximized) with a tmux session, and from their, vim with tabs and splits, other terminal sessions, and what have you.

Yeah. I don't think I'll be giving this up.

I do find it very useful to have my 27" iMac when coding because I like to split pane my IDE windows, so I can see other code as a reference or split my view, model and controller so they are all visible. Sure I could do that on my Air but then there is a lot more scrolling involved.

I'm using 3 monitors on my Mac Pro and feel slightly less productive when I move to my Air. With the three monitors I have one full screen terminal session running tmux, one monitor split between a web browser and a http monitor (charles) and the last one seems to get used for either spotify, email, another web browser session or something else.

Mainly I think the ability to see multiple different things interacting at the same time can be quite useful. If the entire point of having one screen is just so that you can't see your twitter client then maybe closing the twitter client and using that space for a useful tool would make you even more productive than just hiding the twitter client alone?

I'm not sure the (productivity/inch of screen) metric is something we want to optimize. If you reduce your screen size by 50% (24" to 12") and only lose 40% of your productivity, it's not really a win to me. Granted I use 2x24" monitors in portrait orientation and still maximize everything, so I may be an outlier here.

The side effects of screen size reduction are really what provides a benefit for creative work: control your work environment, ruthlessly cull distractions, minimize useless meetings and interactions. It's a classic recipe for achieving flow, and you don't have to reduce your screen real estate if you don't want to.

I would agree with some of the other posters here - it depends on the work you do. I use two 28" monitors at home, and very rarely do they have distractions on them. A webpage I'm referencing, an IDE, another browser for testing, at least two or three terminals for various testing, editing and configuring, perhaps another tool for debugging. When I have to work on my macbook pro I find I'm much slower, because I constantly need to change between all these windows, and some can be very, very frustrating to switch between without setting up intricate keyboard commands.

OMFG! Sorry, but this is inane. Boiling it down, he's saying he doesn't have enough self-control to use a decent work-station because he would fill the screen with distractions. It is entirely possible to live a full and happy life without twitter, IM, email, or even (dare I say it) refreshing HN every 10 minutes. The longest time mentioned in his post was 30 minutes - if this is his measure of "flow" time, I'm actually amazed he gets anything done at all.

I stopped spending time micromanaging window size / position in OS X once I discovered tools like ShiftIt and SizeUp which let me instantly slam a window into any half or quarter of the screen with a key combo. I highly recommend anyone frustrated with OS X window management who just wants simple predictable window placement to check them out.

The grid plugin for Compiz on Linux also works for this.

Total/marginal productivity is the key metric, not productivity per square inch (although it is an interesting concept). The marginal cost of screen real estate is pretty cheap - but if the marginal productivity is negative then it's not worth it.

Off-topic: select the headline text with your mouse. What is going on there?

I find Xcode cramped on anything less than my 27". I find full screen on that is okay, unless you want to work on iPad UIs..

I've tried using both a 21.5" (1920x1080) and a 13" (1280x800) and Xcode is definitely best used on the 27" (2560x1440).

I do definitely fill my spare monitors up with distractions though :-)

I use 2 FullHD screens where one is dedicated to code and the other is for console, project explorer, logviewer etc. All the other stuff is in different workspaces (Unfortunately I must develop on Windows, but I found mDesktop that allows to create virtual desktops).

On the opposite side of things, I agree with the OP.

I find more monitors leads to distractions. I have three monitors in front of me while at work, yet I have them all turned off only using my laptops monitor.

I find its best to stay focused that way.

I work almost exclusively on my 11in Macbook Air, I have a 27in iMac that gathers dust because I find it uncomfortable to be chained to a desk. I think it depends more on the person and how they work. I got into the "Smaller is better" camp when I was forced to use a 9in Dell Hackintosh for a month when my 17in Macbook Pro was getting repaired. I found that I liked a smaler screen (not 9in though, that's too small) I sold the 17in Macbook Pro and picked up the 11in Air. I'm more productive because I have the Air with me 100% of the time because it's so small, I find time to work when I normally would not have brought my 17in Pro with me.

Generalizing from a single case doesn't work that well. I work much better with an external keyboard, external mouse and external 22" monitor. My editor takes 100% vertical space and 70-100% horizontal space.

Firebug. It takes a lot of space. I work on 17" 5 year old Macbook Pro and could not imagine working on an 11" screen. Also ShiftIt and Alfred are probaly the most useful productivity apps I have used.

I have two 20" 4:3 monitors: one for my code editor and one for my browser. Works pretty well.

I do a combination of design and coding work. For design, screen real estate is essential.

Anecdotal evidence... where's the data?

xmonad

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