3 monitors won't solve your problems

It works for some people, it doesn't work for others. It's a mistake to think that more screens means more distractions for everyone. It certainly doesn't for me. When I'm focused on an app, it gets my attention, and the mere presence of data nearby doesn't really get me. The benefit for me is in app switching, because I never have think about it when I can just glance over.

The things that do affect me are popups and noises and the nearby phone. But these are all things that still exist on a single-monitor setup.

I'm glad the author has found a solution that works for him, but it's wrong to generalize it as a solution for everyone.

Sure, increasing the amount of screen space you have doesn't automatically make you more productive, but neither will it make you less productive unless you fill those screens up with nonsense and distractions.

Personally, I got a lot more productive when I went to a triple-monitor setup. I put my code on the middle screen, since it's the most important (emacs, white text on black, some color for syntax, no menu bar, no tool bar, maximized), the program I'm developing on the left (usually but not always a webpage of some type, maximized), and the debugger on the right (tools depend on what I'm working on, of course, but it's maximized). See? No distractions.

When I'm out and don't have all my monitors, each of these things has a window, they're all maximized, and they're all right there at the top of the window list when I alt-tab. No distractions.

Having a separate monitor for each is certainly nicer; alt-tab is generally faster (the computer can swap windows very quickly), but I think the smoother transition of physically looking to the side is less likely to interrupt my train of thought. You know how you sometimes forget what you were doing when you walk into a room? I sometimes feel that way when I alt-tab.

One possible problem with your experience with 3 monitors is that you have poor tools at your disposal to manage them. When I first switched from 2 monitors to 3 monitors (on Linux), it was horrendous:

- My workspaces were monolithic. If I changed my workspace, the windows on all my monitors went with it.

- Alt-tab worked globally across all monitors. I wanted it to only list the windows that were on the currently focused monitor.

- Moving windows from one monitor to the next in a predictable way was a chore. (I eventually resolved this with some key bindings, but it was a hack.)

- No window manager I know of afforded me the option of using tiling or (GOOD) stacking layouts on a per-monitor basis. (Some tiling WMs exist that solve the monolithic workspace problem, but they are all tiling.)

My first solution to this was to fork Openbox. It worked well for a while, but it was subject to a lot of state transition bugs and my hack became hard to maintain.

So I wrote my own. In Go. (Including a full X client stack.) https://github.com/BurntSushi/wingo

I love working with three monitors now, because I can freely mix and match the windows on my screen. My workspaces are dynamic (add/remove/rename as I please), so everything is composable. On one monitor, I might have a bunch of terminals in tiling mode. On another, I might have GIMP in stacking mode. Interestingly, in order to achieve this, I had to break compatibility with existing standards (but support as many as possible). As a result, some existing WM tools (particularly pagers and possibly task bars) just can't work well with my WM without explicit support. Perhaps this is why so few of these WMs exist outside the tiling world!

Thing I'm building | IDE,code,ssh | Documentation / Debugging

Email and messages will always interrupt me, whether I have one monitor or three.

Honestly, the internet is boring. Facebook is boring, here is boring, reddit is boring, it is all boring. It is so much more fun to make stuff. But it's a good place to go to when I want to start my day up, shut it down, and reboot my brain when I'm working on something difficult.

The concept of multitasking and single tasking is oversimplified. People define what tasks are and what organized is. If I see mathematical similarity through the 30 or so random topics I switch up and progress through, there is something that is single tasked in there because it unifies all the information selections, and it builds as I progress through each one.

One of privileges of running your own business, is that you do not have to explain yourself to anyone.

I have 4 screens now, soon will upgrade to three 40" 4K TVs. I also have 24 core machine with 192 GB RAM and water cooling.

I use 3 and it works fine for me (I'd take 3x1920x1200 over a 4k/5k larger monitor).

Middle for code/editor/terminal, right for browser/debugger/unit tests and left for everything else (email, bug tracker, tickets, netflix).

The separation of concerns is what I really like.

http://i.imgur.com/kxcCh8D.jpg is fairly typical.

The OPs arguments on reducing distractions really has nothing to do with using multiple monitors.

I can regularly use multiple screens to perform single tasks: Three screens: one web-browser with the product running, one with browser dev tools open, one with ide/text editor. No distractions, pure coding/debugging.

Or having remote desktops/shells open with tail/ for troubleshooting something in production....or if you're writing/researching etc...

Anyway, the point is there's plenty of single focus tasks that can utilize a multiple monitor desktop for productivity.

Of course, these days with the high-res monitors, you don't really need three anymore, when you can snap two 1200px wide windows next to each other on a single monitor.

While I agree that multi-tasking is a bad idea for productivity, three monitors don't necessarely lead to multi-tasking.

It really depends on how much screen space you need to efficiently do one task. Having three monitors myself, I mostly use two of them, sometimes one or sometimes all three, depending on the task. So you can still minify distraction.

And there are definately tasks where three monitors come in handy and save me a lot of window switching / aligning.

The "macbook on a wooden desk with a moleskine and a cup of coffee" is a running joke on many productivity/minimalism forums.

Distractions, frequent context switching, etc can definitely reduce your productivity. Having three monitors can definitely work enable / exacerbate this, but it doesn't have to. I use three monitors like this. One for a web browser with API docs and testing my web app, one for code, one for build output. If you use an IDE that combines code and build output into one window, then I would say use the remaining two for API docs and your web app.

Next, I think the author needs to try a tiling window manager; to better manage the small amount of screen real estate.

In some companies to have more than one monitor is just a status privilege.

Depends how you use them for webdev I think on monitor for your main IDE a second for the Database IDE(work mangler or what have you) and a main one for the application is a good setup.

You want to hide distractions like Skype,Outlook and so on.

I went from three screens to one of those new 34" curved Dell monitors and it's been a big productivity boost for me. Part of the story is that I was never fully comfortable with either xmonad or gnome-shell on multiple screens. The other part of the story is that it's easy to wind up focusing on the wrong screen, at least for me.

The 34" + xmonad combo with a asymmetric three column format helps me have two large focus windows and a series of shells off to the side, without having the distraction of slack always being visible. As an added benefit, notifications which used to appear on every screen now only appear way, way at the corner of my vision. For me, at least, this is great because I don't notice them if I'm busy concentrating, but if I'm looking at, say, documentation (my rightmost column), the notifications are prominent enough that I can look down and see what I'm missing in another workspace.

It's funny, the NORAD command center in WarGames was an over-the-top set (the director called it "NORAD's wet dream of itself") meant to visually impress the audience, but it became the blueprint for command centers everywhere going nuts with monitors.

Quoth William Lord, Commander, Air Force Cyberspace Command: "It was a great movie! A few years later, I was an executive officer with the Air Force Space Command stationed at Norad near Cheyenne Mountain. And I'm wondering, 'Gee, where can we get such cool-looking displays?' It was a good forcing function. It required us to all of a sudden say, 'If it really can look like this, why doesn't it?'"

Source: http://archive.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16...

2015 and Windos still has no proper working virtual desktops. Not to mention all the other, say, fvwm functionality.

As a professional software developer I would say a multi-monitor setup indeed brings not much extra into my workflow (except maybe for VS Stack Trace and Output panes on a side monitor).

However, as a hobbyist 3D Artist, I would say multiple monitors are a must. When you are modeling you need beauty drawing/different projections side-by-side. You are unwrapping - you need UV window. You are working in Photoshop - you bring all the brush/layer/properties panes to the second monitor, etc, etc.

So this really depends on your task. When your primary UI is a text editor with shortcuts is one case, but if your environment is a mix of an art studio and a Boeing control panel, that's a different situation.

You need a policy on how to use multiple monitors, telling which monitors are assigned to which applications. If you will just randomly place applications on different screens, you will surely get a distracting work environment.

To disprove the statement that 3 monitors cause less productivity, here's a simple policy that always increases productivity (although is rarely optimal): use the extra screen just for one specific app. It leaves more space for other apps on other monitors and you can always have direct access to the separated app. A web browser is a good candidate to be this app.

Glad to see someone else who went towards the empty desktop for their displays. I use various background scenes that are either calming or spark conversation. I have no icons on there other than files/reports being exported on a current problem and on their way to the vendor or responsible team. Once sent they get filed. Its like the age old idea of a clean physical desk. Things are where they belong.

I always liked the dual monitor setup, it keeps work separate from mail/etc without taking up an undue amount of my physical desk and more importantly, eye space.

Ive wished for 3 monitors, usually when debugging a data-binding problem for a massive record. 1 for IDE, 1 for database browser, 1 for GUI. Giant record meaning each of those is full screen.

Personally I found a single 21:9 aspect radio monitor is awesome for displaying code, since it lets you comfortably display 4 files in columns.

Heres an example with Sublime http://i.imgur.com/snoNsUx.png - 72 columns per file, probably 80 if you disable code minimaps, enough for most neatly written code.

I still have an auxiliary monitor on a side for stuff like docs, but all the action happens in front of me.

A lack of resolution independence is the biggest reason why people keep expanding their monitor real estate. If windows could be resized without just rearranging their content, you could get a lot more out of a 24 or 27 inch monitor.

So far, OSX is the closest to getting there, but resizing browser windows still results in mangled layouts or "responsive" reduction when perhaps that's not what I want.

Also, Google Hangouts is the worst.

Portrait orientation definitely solve some problems. Reading is easier as text is narrower. Coding also seems okay if you're not a fan of long lines.

Having one monitor or three makes little difference if you aren't focussed.

Saying that, I love the amount you can get done when you're 'in the zone'. I just wish I could sustain it..

If you haven't tried the Pomodoro technique, I highly recommend it. It's a great tool to be able to pull out when you're feeling lethargic.

I have one 27" monitor that I could attach to my laptop, but right now it functions as a privacy screen from people walking by my office.

I'm just used to a 15" screen with multiple workspaces.

At home, my iMac has a second screen, but I can take it or leave it. I usually just keep a browser open on that one.

Three monitors works great for me, one for log and terminal next for code and the last one for testing environment, and my laptop for reference and documentation. I never have my email up, that is a distraction and I put my phone in DND. I'm more productive this way than any other setup.

Depends on the problems.

Anything to do with video or 3d graphics and it can help a lot.

Maybe you should reconsider keeping the team you have.

This seems like a needless widely sweeping generalization. Maybe 3+ monitors won't solve your problems, but they certainly help mine. The main issue I see people having with multiple and/or large monitors is the window manager. I must admit I find it extremely frustrating to use multiple (large) monitors with anything but a tiling window manager. The Windows partition on my home desktop sits idle basically for that reason alone. I tried Mosaico (http://www.soulidstudio.com/) for a while, but even with the paid pro version, it's a poor imitation at best.

I suppose my view on this might be a bit different since the majority of my work is sysadmin/devops, but I do a fair amount of dev work as well, and am far, far less productive without my setup. I pretty much live on the cli so I suppose that might also be a factor. I like having all necessary information out in front of me, just a glance and possibly a keypress away.

At work I have 2 30 inch 1600p monitors stacked in landscape, and 2 24 inch 1080p monitors in portrait on either side:

          _________
         |         |    
     ____|         |____
    |    |_________|    |
    |    |         |    |
    |    |         |    |
    |____|_________|____|

The left monitor I have 8 terminals open, middle top is monitoring/graphs/alerts, middle bottom is irssi (slack, irc, gtalk, etc), firefox, and another terminal, right monitor is 4 wide terminals.

At home its a bit simpler, 1 39 inch 4k with a 1440 27" in portrait to the left. My setup isn't nearly as static as my work setup, and I change my column/row layout and size depending on what I'm doing.

Any time I get on a computer with a single, small monitor, like a laptop, I find myself barely productive compared to my desktop setups. I tile on my thinkpad and chromebook as well, but it's far more restrictive and mostly in separate tags/workspaces instead of all out in front of me. Although not having a full keyboard probably contributes to that as well. I have keybindings set up in awesome to move/swap/resize the windows and layout and I can get everything perfectly positioned much faster than in a normal window manager. Moving between windows is a matter of Super + hjkl and changing where I'm looking. No messing with alt-tab and trying to find the window I need. I pretty much have keybindings for every operation possible, and rarely move from home row. I honestly don't know how I used to manage to using floating window managers without constant frustration. Awesome has probably been a bigger productivity boost for me than anything else I've done.

Apologies for the rant, but articles and blanket statements like this just rub me the wrong way. "This doesn't work for me/I can't get used to this/I wasn't willing to try the available tools, etc. therefore this is bad and you shouldn't do it" comes off very arrogant and dishonest to me. Not everyone has the same workflow, not everyone focuses the same way, and your way of doing things is not the One True Way.

For a lot of web development work, three is the perfect number. Terminal, IDE, browser.

I know I need a 4th monitor.

Or maybe minimize skype.

I used to use 3 monitors but now I use 2 (one is the size of 2 monitors, 32"). On the left side of one I have the ide and on the other side usually whatever references or document I need to work with, and then on the second monitor half I have for skype and half I have for the debugger/console.

PROTIP: Windows 10 makes it exceptionally easy for a multimonitor setup due to the new snap behavior.

I can't imagine developing without 3 screens worth of real estate. If I had room for another I'd probably put it to very good use.

3 monitors might not solve your problems, but switching to Linux sure would.