Multiple monitors suck your productivity away
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
Does anyone actually have a choice about this though? While I'm working on task A I'm constantly being asked for an update on task B from my boss behind me and while giving it getting a phone call asking about task C while simultaneously seeing an email arrive saying task D is now the highest priority. And this kind of thing was even worse in my last job. Regarding monitors, everywhere I've worked everyone has had at least 2 monitors, sometimes more.
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
On the contrary, when I'm in admin mode for various things two monitors is invaluble - email on the left and the right monitor for other applications. Also I find with Visual Studio it lets me make good use of the right monitor for the editor and the left for class/properties etc. views plus MDSN.
Join the cool kids - Come fold with us[^]
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
Nice study but I could not find the word "Monitor" in the article. Whatever is being told in the article is true, brain can do limited multi tasking. Actually, only about 2% of people can do full multi-tasking. The conclusion you can draw from the article is not use too many applications simultaneously. For instance, checking emails or IMs or scores or Lounge while coding. At least give some strong logical reason about multi-monitors, you have to cite better studies.
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
It really depends what your using the monitors for. For example right now I've got some tutorials on one monitor and Visual studio in the other, in this case I don't need to switch between windows to see everything I want. Or if your working in C++ or something you could have some class definitions on one window while working in the code on t'other. And while playing Left4Dead I can have my media player visible on the other screen so I can play my own music. That does affect productivity though.
My current favourite word: Harsh!
-SK Genius
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On the contrary, when I'm in admin mode for various things two monitors is invaluble - email on the left and the right monitor for other applications. Also I find with Visual Studio it lets me make good use of the right monitor for the editor and the left for class/properties etc. views plus MDSN.
Join the cool kids - Come fold with us[^]
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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Does anyone actually have a choice about this though? While I'm working on task A I'm constantly being asked for an update on task B from my boss behind me and while giving it getting a phone call asking about task C while simultaneously seeing an email arrive saying task D is now the highest priority. And this kind of thing was even worse in my last job. Regarding monitors, everywhere I've worked everyone has had at least 2 monitors, sometimes more.
Anyone who considers themselves a professional should take every opportunity to assert their need to focus on a single task at one time. Anything less is robbing the company of our valuable time. Back in the day developers used to assert their authority in many areas that have slowly eroded away over the years and we have no one to blame but ourselves for this.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
Isn't this the 'multi tasking' study which involved doing some arbitrary tasks a person is not familiar with, and doing a few different ones at the same time? Half the point of multi tasking is you know what you're doing in at least one place and have other things that need to be done as well. Anyone who argues doing 3 things you aren't familiar with at once makes you more productive needs to be promoted to management before they infect the rest of us. That said, even that doesn't say boo about multiple monitors as I'm typically using them both for one task, between data analysis across spreadsheets/databases and code merging/analysis I've found plenty of instances where two monitors saved me quite a bit of time.
modified on Friday, August 27, 2010 1:50 PM
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Hey believe what you want but clearly as the article shows people *think* they are more productive multitasking and objectively are most definitely not.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
There is a huge disconnect between the article and your headline. The article asserts people cannot multitask very efficiently and therefore lose productivity, which is true to a large degree. However, what you implied with your post is that multiple monitors decrease productivity, which is entirely different thing and is patently false. There are numerous situation where using multiple monitors to do a single task can vastly improve productivity. For example you completely ignored Trollslayer comment about spanning VS on two monitors, which is exactly what many people including myself do. My main monitor is all code all the time, my right monitor has various supplementary windows depending if I'm coding or debugging. If I'm coding it's solution explorer, properties, output, error list, task list, find results, find symbol results windows, if I'm debugging it's various watch windows to monitor variables, call stack and output windows mainly. This layout lets me view a lot more code at once while still being able to quickly browse solution, properties, and see variable state, it saves me time having to constantly juggle a bunch of windows I need on a single monitor. Heck, sometimes I wish I had 3 monitors, because I need to google/read example as I code and switching windows is a pane, or what if I need to watch SQL profiler as I execute code? Once again, two monitors are invaluable in this situation, 3 would be even better. Hate to say it because I have an impression that you're a very knowledgeable person, but in this case, you're dead wrong. Not only you're wrong, but you're trying to justify your position using irrelevant examples as is with this article. The article is about multitasking, not using multiple monitors for one task.
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Isn't this the 'multi tasking' study which involved doing some arbitrary tasks a person is not familiar with, and doing a few different ones at the same time? Half the point of multi tasking is you know what you're doing in at least one place and have other things that need to be done as well. Anyone who argues doing 3 things you aren't familiar with at once makes you more productive needs to be promoted to management before they infect the rest of us. That said, even that doesn't say boo about multiple monitors as I'm typically using them both for one task, between data analysis across spreadsheets/databases and code merging/analysis I've found plenty of instances where two monitors saved me quite a bit of time.
modified on Friday, August 27, 2010 1:50 PM
There have been countless studies that show the human brain is physically incapable of true multitasking and more to the point many, many studies that show that context switching kills productivity big time. Having more than one monitor itself isn't damaging it's how people use them which, every time I've brought this up, pretty consistently turns out many people have something in one monitor that is a distraction they have no control over like instant messaging or email or possibly as bad they have a browser window open in the other and jump to it from time to time which I bet almost inevitably leads to a little break here and there to just take a quick look at something unrelated. In any case anyone can learn to alt-tab so at it's heart it's a non issue for 99% of developers save the 1% who do actual real time debugging and need to see the output simultaneously with the debug which I think is probably two developers here over the years that actually need this. What it really comes down to is a childish infatuation with the coolness of having more than one monitor for most despite the proven harm to productivity, the additional expense and the harm to the environment from extra power being wasted unnecessarily. That being said I'm sure we'll never see an end to it until we get some kind of virtual monitor eyeglass / contact lens system. :)
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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There have been countless studies that show the human brain is physically incapable of true multitasking and more to the point many, many studies that show that context switching kills productivity big time. Having more than one monitor itself isn't damaging it's how people use them which, every time I've brought this up, pretty consistently turns out many people have something in one monitor that is a distraction they have no control over like instant messaging or email or possibly as bad they have a browser window open in the other and jump to it from time to time which I bet almost inevitably leads to a little break here and there to just take a quick look at something unrelated. In any case anyone can learn to alt-tab so at it's heart it's a non issue for 99% of developers save the 1% who do actual real time debugging and need to see the output simultaneously with the debug which I think is probably two developers here over the years that actually need this. What it really comes down to is a childish infatuation with the coolness of having more than one monitor for most despite the proven harm to productivity, the additional expense and the harm to the environment from extra power being wasted unnecessarily. That being said I'm sure we'll never see an end to it until we get some kind of virtual monitor eyeglass / contact lens system. :)
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
John C wrote:
In any case anyone can learn to alt-tab
I know how, and it was only after about the 5th massive spread sheet of doom which needed to be translated into something that couldn't summon any dark powers that I bothered with a second monitor. when you're dealing with a lot of information, and you need to see it all at once to make sense of it, two monitors is a pretty good setup. Right now I'd like it if I could stack the two on top of each other so I could actually see this entire query I'm working on at once, rather than blowing time on scrolling up and down every five seconds, because it takes me considerably longer to move the mouse than my eyes, and I then have to find my place back in whatever chunk of the query I had been in.
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There is a huge disconnect between the article and your headline. The article asserts people cannot multitask very efficiently and therefore lose productivity, which is true to a large degree. However, what you implied with your post is that multiple monitors decrease productivity, which is entirely different thing and is patently false. There are numerous situation where using multiple monitors to do a single task can vastly improve productivity. For example you completely ignored Trollslayer comment about spanning VS on two monitors, which is exactly what many people including myself do. My main monitor is all code all the time, my right monitor has various supplementary windows depending if I'm coding or debugging. If I'm coding it's solution explorer, properties, output, error list, task list, find results, find symbol results windows, if I'm debugging it's various watch windows to monitor variables, call stack and output windows mainly. This layout lets me view a lot more code at once while still being able to quickly browse solution, properties, and see variable state, it saves me time having to constantly juggle a bunch of windows I need on a single monitor. Heck, sometimes I wish I had 3 monitors, because I need to google/read example as I code and switching windows is a pane, or what if I need to watch SQL profiler as I execute code? Once again, two monitors are invaluable in this situation, 3 would be even better. Hate to say it because I have an impression that you're a very knowledgeable person, but in this case, you're dead wrong. Not only you're wrong, but you're trying to justify your position using irrelevant examples as is with this article. The article is about multitasking, not using multiple monitors for one task.
Jesus man don't you read through the thread before replying? :) I've already addressed your first point at least twice and countless times over the years that this discussion has come and gone here. Strange how vehemently people defend their multiple monitors. Definitely a raw nerve thing with people. Perhaps you're a member of the 1% who can justify this though by your description I firmly believe not. I previously only knew two people here who could really use multiple monitors, Elaine is one of them because of the specific nature of her work. In your particular example it sounds like what you really need is a larger monitor, not more monitors. The multiple monitor problem *is* a multi tasking and context switching problem for most. It may feel cool to think you're at the helm of the enterprise with all those monitors but in reality it's cheating yourself, your boss and the environment for the vast majority of developers.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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John C wrote:
In any case anyone can learn to alt-tab
I know how, and it was only after about the 5th massive spread sheet of doom which needed to be translated into something that couldn't summon any dark powers that I bothered with a second monitor. when you're dealing with a lot of information, and you need to see it all at once to make sense of it, two monitors is a pretty good setup. Right now I'd like it if I could stack the two on top of each other so I could actually see this entire query I'm working on at once, rather than blowing time on scrolling up and down every five seconds, because it takes me considerably longer to move the mouse than my eyes, and I then have to find my place back in whatever chunk of the query I had been in.
Distind wrote:
when you're dealing with a lot of information, and you need to see it all at once to make sense of it, two monitors is a pretty good setup
Um...a very large single monitor is a far better setup in my opinion. Every argument for multiple monitors I've seen comes in four flavours: 1) a person works on some kind of real time video output system that needs debugging simultaneous to watching the output. That's two developers out of all the ones that post in the lounge over the last few years that I know of. 2) "I need more space to see stuff" - Get a bigger monitor, your eyes and brain will thank you by being less stressed. 3) "I need to refer to stuff while working" - Alt tab is your friend, invest the money in a super sized monitor instead which is useful 100% of the time and learn to alt-fricken-tab like the flying spaghetti monster and Microsoft intended. 4) "I need to monitor email / play games / instant message etc" - Needs no explanation really but if you really think this you are not being a professional developer or are not allowed to be one and are not forceful enough about explaining why your time is valuable to the company and why they are cheating themselves by not allowing you to focus on work exclusively when needed or are utterly clueless about productivity and multitasking and context switching. Or are not really a developer at all, that's more of a sideline and so your productivity isn't really an issue anyway because you're not important enough to anyone to treat like a real developer.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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Jesus man don't you read through the thread before replying? :) I've already addressed your first point at least twice and countless times over the years that this discussion has come and gone here. Strange how vehemently people defend their multiple monitors. Definitely a raw nerve thing with people. Perhaps you're a member of the 1% who can justify this though by your description I firmly believe not. I previously only knew two people here who could really use multiple monitors, Elaine is one of them because of the specific nature of her work. In your particular example it sounds like what you really need is a larger monitor, not more monitors. The multiple monitor problem *is* a multi tasking and context switching problem for most. It may feel cool to think you're at the helm of the enterprise with all those monitors but in reality it's cheating yourself, your boss and the environment for the vast majority of developers.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
John C wrote:
Strange how vehemently people defend their multiple monitors. Definitely a raw nerve thing with people.
I'm thinking this is more how the study is completely unrelated to your claim, and in my opinion a fairly lousy way to examine the subject in general. That, and it's Friday, if it doesn't look like work it'll get someone's attention.
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Hey believe what you want but clearly as the article shows people *think* they are more productive multitasking and objectively are most definitely not.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
-
It's been my experience despite howls of protest here when I bring it up and here is yet another study that explains why: http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2009/multitask-research-release-082409.html[^]
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
After reading the other responses, I would have to agree with the premise of the article, but disagree with the multiple monitors. There are some places where multiple monitors definitely are an advantage. Let me tell you of two in my case: Right now, I am working on a multimonitor application - this app shows one UI on the main computer screen and a totally different UI on all other screens. The reason this is done is for bingo - the caller stand needs one set of information and a totally different set of information is shown to the players on either big screen TVs or projectors around the bingo hall. While I could potentially work on this on a single monitor using VMs and Maxivista to show the UI on the secondary computers, this would make things very overly complicated when multiple screens work (I use 3 at a time for this). The second one is back from 1996-1999. I was working on antilock brakes for semi trucks at the time. Our controller had 2 microcontrollers on it, communicating with each other. The in circuit emulator (ICE) for these micros took two full ISA slots in a computer. Because of some stupid corporate edicts, we were not allowed to have anything but a certain brand of PC which only had 2 ISA slots in it. So, we had to have multiple machines. In my case, I had 5 total machines in order to fully work on the system (all running at the same time). One PC for each microcontroller, one PC for the ABS simulator software (more slots), one for RS232 type communications, and one for the data acquisition software. Some of these ran 95, and some could only run Win 3.1! So there are cases where multimonitor setups (and multiple PCs) are worthwhile!
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John C wrote:
Strange how vehemently people defend their multiple monitors. Definitely a raw nerve thing with people.
I'm thinking this is more how the study is completely unrelated to your claim, and in my opinion a fairly lousy way to examine the subject in general. That, and it's Friday, if it doesn't look like work it'll get someone's attention.
Distind wrote:
I'm thinking this is more how the study is completely unrelated to your claim
It's perfectly related to my claim, perhaps people are too distracted trying to work and read their cp messages at the same time to really take the time to *think* about stuff before posting. Luckily I don't start work for a few more weeks after a summer off so I have plenty of time to devote to thinking about things. ;)
Distind wrote:
That, and it's Friday, if it doesn't look like work it'll get someone's attention.
Actually this is part of an ongoing series of discussions going back at least 3 years probably more which is where I'm coming from with this however I guess I should consider my audience better, there are a lot of new members who haven't been privy to the other hundreds of posts about this topic in the past. My argument against multiple monitors has always been about productivity lost due to multi tasking and context switching. People here argue that the ability to look at two things at once overrides the losses of productivity by saving time. My point is that people are undervaluing their own time and concentration and overvaluing the gains of multitasking which is exactly what this article was about.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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"People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information" The key word is "streams". Please read the article again. My operations are not with streams.
Join the cool kids - Come fold with us[^]
Peace Elaine, I was just messing with you, in fact you are one of the two people I have in my mind from here when I say perhaps 1% of developers here have an actual need for more than one monitor.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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After reading the other responses, I would have to agree with the premise of the article, but disagree with the multiple monitors. There are some places where multiple monitors definitely are an advantage. Let me tell you of two in my case: Right now, I am working on a multimonitor application - this app shows one UI on the main computer screen and a totally different UI on all other screens. The reason this is done is for bingo - the caller stand needs one set of information and a totally different set of information is shown to the players on either big screen TVs or projectors around the bingo hall. While I could potentially work on this on a single monitor using VMs and Maxivista to show the UI on the secondary computers, this would make things very overly complicated when multiple screens work (I use 3 at a time for this). The second one is back from 1996-1999. I was working on antilock brakes for semi trucks at the time. Our controller had 2 microcontrollers on it, communicating with each other. The in circuit emulator (ICE) for these micros took two full ISA slots in a computer. Because of some stupid corporate edicts, we were not allowed to have anything but a certain brand of PC which only had 2 ISA slots in it. So, we had to have multiple machines. In my case, I had 5 total machines in order to fully work on the system (all running at the same time). One PC for each microcontroller, one PC for the ABS simulator software (more slots), one for RS232 type communications, and one for the data acquisition software. Some of these ran 95, and some could only run Win 3.1! So there are cases where multimonitor setups (and multiple PCs) are worthwhile!
Yes, congratulations you are the third person here to *ever* illustrate any real use for more than one monitor. I'll amend my mental map to include one more person bringing to the total to three of the thousands who have posted here about what they do since the CodeProject lounge came into existence. You, Elaine and Jeffrey are an elite club. :)
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson