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
(Without reading the study) It's the multitasking, not the multiple monitors, right?
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Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
I use multiple monitors, as do most people here, but we're not "regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information", we're just using two monitors to do work. We have windows open with our work in them. There ain't no "bombardment by several streams of electronic information'; there's just people doing their jobs. Or did you think that we only have multiple monitors so that we can have stuff pumped at us from multiple different sources, all unrelated to each other? If that's how you use computers, I doubt very much that you get any work done.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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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.
I have to agree totally with this. There isn't anything in this article about multiple monitors. Having two monitors is about having extra space to put information you need to perform the current task - as opposed to having to go looking for it. You'd understand the importance if your company forced McAfee on you and you had to wait 15 - 45 seconds just to open up a folder in Windows Explorer.
You are here - through no fault of mine!
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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
Where in the world did you get that conclusion from this paper? The paper is about multitasking, NOT the use of multiple monitors to extend the work-area.
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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 looks to me like your contention is that while using multiple monitors not necessarily be bad in and of itself, it can lead to behavior that is bad, i.e. attempting to multi-task when it's not appropriate to do so, sort of a "gateway drug". You also believe that using one large monitor is better, for a variety of reasons, including power usage, than using multiple smaller ones. Are those fair statements, of have I completely misunderstood you?
Currently reading: "A Desert Called Peace", by Tom Kratman
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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
Am I the other one then? ;) Seriously though - as an ISV founder I'm all too well aware of the dangers of multi-tasking, and therefore do my best to single task when I can. Even so I regularly run out of screen real estate, and it's enough of an issue that I'm seriously thinking of adding a third monitor so I don't have to keep obscuring my primary windows with the ancillary but essential stuff (source control, web searches, draft responses to bug reports etc.) supporting my primary workflow.
Anna :rose: Tech Blog | Visual Lint "Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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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
John C wrote:
- 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.
I have this GUI app and need to debug it at the same time. I have this website and want to see the debug output (e.g. how many SQL queries) at the same time. I have version 1 of the software and version 2 at the same time and need to compare how they handle case X. I don't know where you got your 2%, I think it's much more like 90% of developers who would benefit from multiple monitors.
John C wrote:
- "I need more space to see stuff" - Get a bigger monitor, your eyes and brain will thank you by being less stressed.
My eyes they aren't stressed with two monitors. I usually look just at one of them - except when I'm comparing stuff (see use cases above). A big monitor with comparable size has not much of an advantage there, but is much more expensive. I paid 300$ for both my monitors together. How much do I have to pay for a monitor that can show VS and my GUI app next to each other (needs approx. a width of 2500 pixels)?
John C wrote:
- "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.
Moving my eyes is a lot faster than pressing Alt-Tab. With windows changing Z-order, I need to reorient where stuff is. With multiple monitors, stuff stays in the same place and I can find it fast.
John C wrote:
- "I need to monitor email / play games / instant message etc"
If your task is to write an email / chat with another developer about the code, then it surely helps to have the chat on one monitor and the code on another. However you need to be aware then that communication is your main task for the moment and you're not going to get any other work done.
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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:
In your particular example it sounds like what you really need is a larger monitor, not more monitors.
That is the whole point everyone is trying to make here. Two or three monitors are used as ONE big monitor, not for two or three different tasks they are trying to do at once. But one task, with a large desk to place their work on. There is a huge difference between multitasking, which could be done on one monitor, and single tasking on multiple monitors.
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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
Yes but still, your title is stupid. You could have said "You shouldn't use multitasking as an argument for multiple monitors." We often use multiple monitors either for a single task, or for a task staged and waiting, which we want to pick up fast. I practically always do most of my work on my primary monitor. The left is for chatting etc, when I want to take a very short break, and the right for emails, where I (don't have a choice but to) reply quite fast. And when there's a task that requires a lot of concentration, I use two monitors for the task and COMPLETELY ignore the third (I think I would be as well off with two instead of 3 monitors).
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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.
Have to agree with the reply here. I was a bit surprised, actually, when I clicked the link and it opened an article about multi-tasking. For me, having multiple monitors helps me single-task. When I first came to work here, 16 years ago, they gave me two monitors, and it was a "luxury" that quickly started to feel like a necessity. I didn't have any sort of internet distraction at that time. Having a window for the code and another for the process that the code is running, especially when it requires interaction, is very valuable. It's also very useful to have data structures visible while you're working on a section of code, and yes, a web browser can be handy if you're looking at a code example relating to the code you have open on the other monitor. Before multiple monitors, I would have had a print-out of some of the data structures, and perhaps a book or two open. The monitors just replace the paper. (Although I still sometimes wish for continuous forms!)
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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.
I totally agree with JJR. I'm writing this on my MacBook Pro laptop with four external monitors, while taking a break from iPhone development. I can tell you, after 25+ years coding, that working with at least 2 screens is far far more productive for me than using one. Using 5 screens... well when I'm comparing code and interface templates from two different apps, I need as many as I can get. Developing iPad apps requires even more screens when viewing and comparing interface templates. So the headline really has nothing to do with multitasking and its merits or lack of. And btw, I'm a long-time multitasker, which DOES work if you know your limits and do it right.
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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
Overengineered frameworks are doing the job just fine.
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It looks to me like your contention is that while using multiple monitors not necessarily be bad in and of itself, it can lead to behavior that is bad, i.e. attempting to multi-task when it's not appropriate to do so, sort of a "gateway drug". You also believe that using one large monitor is better, for a variety of reasons, including power usage, than using multiple smaller ones. Are those fair statements, of have I completely misunderstood you?
Currently reading: "A Desert Called Peace", by Tom Kratman
Yes, fair statements. Whenever people mention using multiple monitors and describe what they actually do with them, more often than not it's to save having to type ctrl-alt (which is just lazy) and worst of all they have some kind of interrupting application running in another window like email or chat or web surfing etc. My thinking is a single monitor is most efficient because you make make a single app large properly, you can't do that with multiple monitors, however with a single monitor you really can tile your windows if you wish. And a single monitor doesn't lead as easily to tiling multiple interrupting windows.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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Where in the world did you get that conclusion from this paper? The paper is about multitasking, NOT the use of multiple monitors to extend the work-area.
You took the time to read the article but not the discussion here first before posting? For the *very* last time I'll repeat myself to say that multiple monitors lead very naturally to people multitasking with interrupting applications in other windows. Every time this comes up people confirm that's often how they use multiple monitors, as a way to dividing their focus. My contention as always is that dividing your focus in an attempt to multitask destroys your productivity. Development (at a professional level anyway) is all about efficiently maintaining the mental context of what you're working on. Anything that causes you to switch context even for an instant such as looking over at your email monitor causes a loss of focus and productivity. A single, large, monitor means less wasted electricity and manufacturing resources, it leads to working properly on ONE THING AT A TIME and you can still split your windows out *when necessary* and tile them for the very limited amount of justifiable work that requires more than one visible window.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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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
John C wrote:
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.
You're kidding right? This goes against everything that we're constantly told is acceptable. Hell, when I was a Microsoft employee we were constantly being forced to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. That's why they keep getting rid of the older folks and hiring younger folks. Older folks realize the falicy of this while younger folks just keep trying and burning themselves out working days, nights and weekends.
Mike Poz
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Have to agree with the reply here. I was a bit surprised, actually, when I clicked the link and it opened an article about multi-tasking. For me, having multiple monitors helps me single-task. When I first came to work here, 16 years ago, they gave me two monitors, and it was a "luxury" that quickly started to feel like a necessity. I didn't have any sort of internet distraction at that time. Having a window for the code and another for the process that the code is running, especially when it requires interaction, is very valuable. It's also very useful to have data structures visible while you're working on a section of code, and yes, a web browser can be handy if you're looking at a code example relating to the code you have open on the other monitor. Before multiple monitors, I would have had a print-out of some of the data structures, and perhaps a book or two open. The monitors just replace the paper. (Although I still sometimes wish for continuous forms!)
WHS!
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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
Very large monitors are, even today, relatively expensive: ie twice my current desktop area costs nearly four times as much as the two monitors currently hosting it. The only reason I use two monitors is to have more 'desk' space, so I don't need to keep refering to paper printouts, reference books, tabbing between output and edit windows etc etc When I have to (because I'm travelling) I can do all my dev work on my 13in laptop screen, but it takes much longer because I cannot view as much without context switching, which breaks concentration etc! Multi-tasking bad, multiple monitors (not multi-tasked) good!
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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
John, You're misinterpreting the study. The study only shows that people who multitask using multiple screens are less productive overall. This is not a commentary on the use of multiple screens, it is a commentary on the price of multitasking. Many of us use multiple screens to be more effective at a single task. For example, I frequently run an app on one screen while debugging in another. This saves me from flipping back and forth and helps me keep my mind focused on the task at hand, rather than repeatedly having to remember where I was either in the app, or in the code. They're both right there. My preferred setup has a third small monitor for debug output. Everything in front of me shows me exactly what I need to complete a single task. I know from considerable experience, that I can code and debug about 1.5 to 2 times faster using this setup than I can on a single monitor. This is not what I "think". I worked for years where I had to keep close track of my time, so I know this for a fact. To argue that the use of multiple monitors always resulted in decreased productivity, one should, by extension, argue that the larger the monitor (or higher the resolution), the less productive a person would be. After all, the larger the monitor, the more information you can see at one time. Effectively, you are arguing that the more you have in front of you, the less productive you are. Again, this is not what the study is showing. Granted, if you have email on one monitor, code on another, and a memo you are typing in another monitor, of course you are going to be less effective. This is simply a matter of how one manages ones workflow. Though I have 2-3 monitors most of the time, I have generally have only one task going on at a time. When I am designing software, I am just doing that. When I am coding, I am just doing that. When I want to check my email, I am just doing that. My brain is just not organized enough to multitask and I know it. Even just a coworker stopping by and saying, "I know you're busy, but when you have a minute can I ask you a question" - even that brief interruption of thought can cost me 15-30 minutes of productivity if I am really into something complex.
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WHS!
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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