Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One | Hacker News Reader

Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One

nytimes.com

22 pointsnoblethrasher47 comments

Meh.

What this article really means is "If you get distracted by things, keeping distractions up on more screens will make you more distracted."

I have my laptop screen and 3 extra monitors:

1) Email. I keep my main inbox very filtered - email that shows up there is important and I need to see it and read it asap

2) IRC/OCS. Work communication primarily happens through these, and much of it is important.

3) Browser open to our internal workflow tools / tabs for research

4) Laptop screen, closest to me out of all of these, where I have terminals open, etc.

I originally only had one extra display outside of the monitor, but my productivity /very/ measurably went up when I added more displays. No more hunting to find the window I wanted. Easy to reference things when talking to people. Easy to reference things when working on a server. etc etc etc.

So, like just about every tool out there, the usefulness is determined by the use case that prompted it, and how effectively you use it.

How are you using the three external monitors from a laptop? The reason I stick with a desktop is because I very heavily rely upon three monitors and haven't found any decent solutions to do so with a laptop. I'm using ubuntu, so I understand if the OS is a limitation, but I'd still love to hear about what you're using to make it work.

I'm not who you asked, but I have:

2012 Retina macbook pro 15"

27" display port dell 24" display port dell 27" Samsung on hdmi to dvi cable.

It will run all 4 screens at once.

Interesting. I have a 2013 MBP from work and my monitors have HDMI and I seem to recall HDMI / DP converters. I'll need to check if the display ports work well with ubuntu. Thanks!

(two 27s and a 24! Fantastic!)

You can get external USB monitors. I've used three displays on a laptop - DVI, laptop display, USB display

Same, I might just add that the USB monitor thing (well, DisplayLink at least) is not as bad as one would expect. It's surprisingly efficient and 99.9% of the time you won't notice the difference. When playing full screen video it might take up a bit of CPU power, but unless you're under heavy load already it won't matter. Been using a StarTech DisplayLink adapter for 2 years now and never complained.

EDIT: A quick google reveals it might not behave as well on a linux-based OS.

If you get easily distracted, make what you want to be working on distract you away from unproductive things. E.g. I've made an autohotkey script to bring my IDE to the front when I've finished a build, and command line aliases to trigger desktop notifications when long running operations finish.

Since this is HN and most people here have written code, I compare multi-monitor setups to a text/code editor with a single panel/pane. You just don't do it! Sublime, N++, Atom, etc. all support multiple panes (split screen). Once you get coding enough you never go back to using a single pane.

Same thing with multi-monitor. As long as you are productive (unlike the author), more screen real estate is better (obviously, there are limits)

Personally, I like dual 27"s. Allows you to run 4 full size (think 8.5"x11") word docs at 100% side by side. Very nice!

What the author failed to account for is the fact that not everyone does the same type of work. As a security researcher I spend a fair amount of time watching real-time code execution while simultaneously watching & modifying network traffic. In a typical solution review I might have Wireshark running on one monitor, an HTTP editor/proxy running on another hooked to the browser, another HTTP editor/proxy running on yet another monitor hooked to the web service. That's three monitors right there. Next I'll have the browser running on a fourth monitor and possibly be reviewing code and code execution on a fifth. On the sixth and seventh monitors I'll be doing research including static code analysis with the eighth and ninth monitors dedicated to coms (chat/email) and writing up my results. I routinely switch between my multi-monitor solution and a single screen laptop and there's just simply no way I can effectively do my job on one monitor these days. I'll do "simple" reviews on my one monitor laptop and stick with the multi-monitor solution for the harder stuff.

http://defaultstore.com/mydesk.jpg

Keep in mind that the author is Farhad "Stop Calling Me a Troll" Manjoo. He's sort of a junior version of John C Dvorak, albeit less experienced and less amusing.

I've gone back to a single screen. It turns out, using tools like SizeUp/Spectactle/etc. were all I needed to balance the two tasks I spend 90% of my time multitasking between - coding and the output.

When I had a second monitor on, it had my IMs, emails, Twitter, etc. and became a source of distraction more than anything.

Anecdotally, I've worked in bullpen offices where everyone has a second screen and consistently see Facebook, YouTube, or Netflix being actively used while coding. Not as passive background noise, but constant code, fb, code, skip commercial, etc.

It makes sense to me that by having more screens, either on our desks, in our hands, or on our walls, we're doing less while pretending to do more.

Protip: put productive things on >both< monitors.

And now you're split between two productive things. More reason to procrastrinate.

Better just have the productive thing you should be focused on one at a time up on a sigle monitor.

Uhm, if it's distracting you from that task at hand, instead of helping you complete it, it's not a productive thing.

My code editor lives on one screen, usually with four files in veiw. My browser and console live on the other. It's really no different that one screen.

Exactly right, communication tools should have no real estate if you're trying to focus. I keep three screens: one with multiple terminals, one with my code editor(s), and one for displaying whatever I'm coding (android emulator, browser, etc) as well as docs, research, etc.

If I'm coding, all comms are off to avoid any distraction - specifically to avoid notifications. I'm I'm in support mode (flapping server, etc), comms are up, but they get a tiny slice of real estate next to my terminal with logs and such so we can triage and move on.

This should be titled, "two big screens aren't better that one big screen." I've had multiple desktops with two 21" CRTs, back when that made you a fancy boy, and had considerable improvement in workflow from it. Now, with my 27" Thunderbolt monitor, I can't imagine the frustration of having to turn my head instead of move my eye to change my mind's focus.

This transition was after having done most of my development on a 15" laptop, and re-learning how to be productive without distractions... everyone's mileage will of course vary, so blanket statements are worthless.

I transitioned from three 19" monitors to two beautiful 27" monitors for about a year. I hated it. Nonetheless, I gave it a worthy shot and allowed myself to get used to it. Turns out, I'm most productive when I have at least three separate contexts, in which a single window (or a couple representative windows) can hold the full screen, without needing to worry about rearranging things.

Unfortunately, moving to a single screen of any size is debilitating by a large margin for me these days.

I may be alone, but I'll generally take 2 19" non-widescreen monitors over a single giant monitor any day of the week. There's something (possibly as a minority windows user) that I really like about throwing things from screen to screen. Especially when I have to do the rare front-end tweaks. Some people may be able to spit out perfect CSS without seeing the site they're working on, but I'm 95% a back end dev, so when I have to do the odd styling related task, it's a lot of try this, refresh, try this.. something that works about three times as fast when I have two monitors.

At work, I have three. 2 high quality widescreens, one center, one to the right, and a tiny (by my request) 17" standard ratio screen to the left that email sits on all day long. It moves so rarely that it catches my eye when it does, but again.. it was such a low cost investment that it's almost negligible. When I come home I have one large screen, and an old 17" standard screen to the left. The left screen is almost always playing a TV show or movie, and the center screen is everything from life, to work, to just wasting time.

If I had a single point with all of this, it's that windows don't mean the same to me as screens do. Even with the new win8/metro style interfaces ability to segment screens, I really like the "this one does this, this one does that" effect I get from two monitors.

I'm a mechanical engineer, but I largely feel the same way. I have one higher quality screen in front of me dedicated to Solidworks and a second screen dedicated to everything else; usually a task list/ McMaster-Carr/ Excel and Soundcloud or whatever music and task manager (need to know if Chrome + solidworks are eating ALL of the RAM).

I think 2 (or more) screen displays make sense for professionals who need the extra screen constantly up -- e.g music producers seeing both their DAW audio lanes and individual sequencer piano rolls, or video editors watching the video tracks, color controls etc on one monitor and a full screen of the movie in the other.

For programmers not so much (even something like console output/build results you better decide when to focus on it, rather than constantly having it as a distraction).

For me it is the ability to have my code up on one screen, and a debugger on the other. So that I can look at my debugger, and look at my code at the same time.

Or instead of a debugger, have a web browser with my current site, the web inspector, and my CSS so I can make modifications easily.

Programming with multiple monitors makes me a faster programmer as I am spending less time switching between applications.

As a former professional musician and professional developer, I disagree. Creative work involves integrating large numbers of different items together at once - almost constantly, whether that is code or flows of audio.

A news junkie finds out that distracting himself makes him less productive. From this we can conclude that ALL people who have two screens should forget the second one. Right.

Or, with a more charitable and less snarky reading, let's condlude that it's possible that "2 screens can be worse than one".

Or maybe that most people are "news junkies" that can benefit from less distractions, whether they believe it applies to them or not.

While I agree that my comment was snarky, the author didn't couch the statements at all.

"Discovering Two Screens Aren't Better Than One"

That makes it sound an awful lot like a fact or a universal law, not someone's personal opinion. When it's clearly one person's opinion.

Just about everyone who needs to "multi-task" by reading documentation and applying that knowledge can and likely will benefit from multiple screens. I wish I had three, really.

That's a huge part of the economy; software, CAD/CAM, basically anything engineering-ish at all.

To suppose that the way that you use a computer is the same as the way everyone uses a computer is rather arrogant, don't you think?

I have my main monitor with my vim editor, one monitor with the terminal (tests, logs, console, debugger...), those two are single windows split in multiple pieces.

On the third monitor I have the actual app running (be iOS simulator, browser window or normal native app, virtual machine, whatever)

And I have a fourth monitor with team chat, documentation, sourcetree and "general browsing".

When I work I just keep my email and other IM closed. Those are distracting in single or multiple monitor mode anyway.

I have two horizontally stacked 27' monitor at the center and 1 vertical 27' monitor on each side. This provides a quite compact work area, at least I can see the whole estate without moving my head too much.

I am now traveling and on a single screen, and I am more distracted that ever, because I cannot keep my work "open" all the time and as soon as I switch to another window, it's full screen and covers everything.

So he should really go old school and work on a 24 x 80 ASCII terminal :-) There are no distractions :-)

You can use screen though :-P

I use two monitors to code, debug, shell, test, etc... with when I am working and nothing else is open on that machine other than work or research related to what I am doing. Not even email is open. All of my distractions (email included) are on my laptop with it's own extra screen. The key (for me anyway) is setting your screen saver to come on or go blank after a short period of inactivity mine is 5 minutes. This visually blocks anything from grabbing my attention on this machine. Now all the flashy alerts and popups are hidden from view.

This article should have been titled something else as the multiple monitors aren't the issue. If you are being distracted with multiple monitors from the work you are supposed to be doing then you need to close those distracting items or block them visually.

While everyone seems to be focusing on the issues of distractions, I have found myself in the habit of using one screen due to a particular testing issue. All of the devs in my group were using two screens, and so were the testers, but the majority of our customers used one screen. Customers would run into issues which the devs wouldn't be able to reproduce. It turned out that the issue was pop-ups ('foo is bar; click ok to continue') which would appear normally if you were running the app in your right-hand screen, but which would appear off-screen to a single-screen user. Being the only single-screen user in the development group enabled me to solve the bug and prevent many future cases of the same bug getting through into production.

My setup for front-end development:

* 15" Retina MPB at 1920x1200 (iTerm 2 with either 3 or 4 panes)

* 27" Thunderbolt (two documents side-by-side, currently tolerating Atom)

* 27" iMac in target display mode (browser and dev tools).

And that's just the three spaces that I do most of my work in. I've got other spaces set up for general browsing, email, image editing, chat, etc.

It's probably excessive for most people. But I need to see all of these things. If I can't have them all up at once, I have to do a lot of switching between windows and spaces, and that takes a time. It's small amounts, but it adds up. I rely on tools like Gulp and BrowserSync to help me save small amounts of time. Staying focused by keeping my work in front of me really does help to keep me focused.

For just writing code, like real algorithmic stuff, I've never been more productive than on my 12" ThinkPad X201. Multi mon is great for many things, but in-the-flow coding doesn't seem to benefit. Unfortunately, Lenovo trashed the ThinkPad line, and I actually hate every minute I'm using my T440p. I'd pay $3000 to get an X201 with updated hardware. Nothing else I've seen comes close to the old X series. It had a full sized real ThinkPad keyboard, no compromises!

I like my X220 off of ebay. It's a 12" machine, but it's fast enough for me and pretty cheap. The screen isn't great, though...

I held off on the subsequent X series because of the dumb 16:9 screens at low resolution! Less than 800 vertical pixels just doesn't work. Also, after the X201_ they started breaking the keyboard, killing the full-sized legendary boards.

The X240 finally improved the screen a bit, but has totally ruined the pointer input and keyboard. Plus apparently it has a lot of problems, and they crippled the RAM (8GB max, in 2014).

I wish some hardware hacker would find a way to mod these things. I'd pay $400, plus costs, to mod modern ThinkPads to use the old kb and pointer setup. I've lost at least that much in decreased work, frustration (I have a under 20% success trying to right click on the abominable clickpad, and worse for middle click) and literal physical pain.

If your primary use for a second display is email, then sure I guess it could just be a distraction. But when you're working with several applications at once to accomplish a single task, multiple monitors are a necessity. If you have ever spend any time at all doing data entry, it's immediately obvious how much more efficient it is.

I think this is just another case of a tool blaming his tools.

He is obviously distracted by default, and incapable of going without Facebook on IV and Twitter through a nasal tube.

With great firepower, comes great opportunity to shoot one's self in the foot. He doesn't realize that this doesn't mean it's counterproductive, but rather that he is.

Ubuntu virtual desktops are enough for me, and I use them all the time.

When I have to use Windows, I end up installing VirtuaWin just because of the muscle memory related to my workflow.

I agree with the author. Working with 2 (or even 3) small, low quality monitors is worse than working with 1 decent monitor.

I agree that two are worse than one, but only if that one is big enough - 27" or above.

truly laughable,

also when your primary screen is a 27 inch 1080p wide panel display as he seems to have in the picture, you probably aren't feeling as constrained as most people with their 4 year old low res 15 inch laptops.

>truly laughable

I, and lots of others, find it quite reasonable. Any counter-arguments besides the quick dismissal?

>also when your primary screen is a 27 inch 1080p wide panel display as he seems to have in the picture, you probably aren't feeling as constrained as most people with their 4 year old low res 15 inch laptops

Well, I work on a 15 inch laptop and don't feel constrained. And lots of people work on 13" Macbook Airs and the like and feel quite focused and OK. It's not like it only applies to people with 27" monitors.

I have a counter-argument that seems about as strong as the author's.

Sometimes I use one monitor and sometimes I use two. I perceive less friction when using two.

The author's argument boils down to

"when I use my second monitor (which I put twitter and other inane distractions on) I get distracted by it. Therefore 2 monitors are bad"

no way!

My argument is "When I have my editor on one screen and my debugger/docs/browser in the other, I get more work done than if I had to alt tab every 5 seconds. Therefore 2 monitors are good"

Considering we are comparing anecdotal evidence, I'm going to go ahead and say my reasoning is a lot more coherent.

The authors problem, is that if he sees no productivity decrease or he even sees a productivity increase is that he had no business using multiple monitors in the first place. (And considering this person is a journalist, I don't see why he would need more than one half of the monitor for word and the other for his research)

IMO... We should start banning the times with their new paywall.

the only reason i have a second screen is because i have a laptop plugged into an external monitor.

I hardly use my retina display for anything. i miss my 17" mbp displays.

Seems like classic Hawthorne effect...

> But if you wouldn’t watch a movie or play a video game while you’re trying to get something done, why would you keep an app as distracting as email sitting within your field of view?

Because... I wouldn't? I use a window manager and I don't have a system tray (so no email notifications, for example). Often, I have one application open on each screen, perhaps a PDF reader, a text editor or a browser. Then, if I need to actually look at two things fairly back and forth, I'll split that screen into two, or use both monitors. What if I don't need the second monitor? I guess it could just be looking at the wallpaper, or displaying an analogue clock (that is: if I'm not looking too much at the clock, pining for the time to pass quicker!).

Does using two monitors make me more productive? I don't know yet. But I don't see how two monitors would make me more susceptible to procrastination. If I feel the need to fire up the browser and go to reddit or something, that's pretty much as with one monitor as with two. The time and effort I save by not having to minimize the currently focused app in order to open the browser, compared to just opening a browser on the already blank second monitor, seems so small as to be inconsequential to a bored, wandering mind.

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