I’ve been employed in the same company for the past 16 years as a systems analyst. Over the past 10 years or so I’ve always had 2-3 monitors (4 - 5 at times when I got real ambitious). Recently, I downgraded to a single 32" 1440p monitor and it feels as if I’m able to focus more intently on what I’m working on.
I’m not saying it will help everyone, but it’s really helped me regain focus. So many distracting windows are now gone. No longer keeping tabs on Discord/YouTube/etc while working…well, not as much at least.
Has anyone else noticed an increased work efficiency when ‘downgrading’ to a single monitor setup?
I have never had a second monitor as I have speakers that take that space. Keeping my phone out of reach definitely helps.
I have 3 monitors and sometimes, when I want to focus more, I turn off one of them and use the 2 remaining monitors for a single task, similar to what you do. So yes, I think it can help if you’re only doing one thing.
Now, when I do many small things at the same time, there’s no way I can focus unless I have all my monitors on.
Most of my coding happens on the monitor of an 15" thinkpad. No room for distracting stuff, atleast not visibly and missing emails or instant messages is way easier if they are just a single ping, thats drowned out by music, instead of a cascade of text scrolling by.
The big monitor is for less focused work or the odd day i actually want to look at multiple things at once to find an odd quirk happening in a bigger system.
Not for me, I am “out of sight - out of mind” and on a regular day I need several tools (for example code editor, several terminal sessions and at least a browser session). When I’ve tried one screen, I can space out for a long time because I have to keep reminding myself to bring one of those tools to the foreground when I need them. I need to see all the relevant things in front of me.
I don’t really use any social or leisure sites on my work set up; I use a separate computer for that, which makes it easier to do one thing at the time. At most I have some music in the background.
I’m a software engineer. One monitor for vim, one monitor for the terminal, one monitor for the browser. Somewhere in there is chat, which is how I do most of my work communication. I have to keep a lot of information in front of me while I work so I benefit from more monitor space.
The distraction tends to come from my phone, or more generally when my company does something infuriating and I can’t think straight for a while.
I think that experience is really going to depend on the individual. I like having a monitor dedicated to email/calendar. But I can certainly understand how it could turn into a distraction.
