Unpopular opinion: my dual monitor setup was actually slowing me down for years

I was convinced two screens made me more productive until I timed myself doing a design review last Tuesday and realized I was constantly turning my head back and forth like a tennis match. What finally tipped me off was when my neck started aching after just 2 hours of work and I noticed I'd missed a typo on the left screen that was right in front of me. Has anyone else found that going back to one big screen actually helped them focus better than having two?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie_stone722d ago

Spent a whole year thinking I was some kind of productivity god with my dual 27 inchers until I realized I'd been basically shoulder-checking an invisible lane change every 30 seconds. My neck actually started making this weird cracking sound and I thought I was turning into human Rice Krispies. Swapped to a single ultrawide and suddenly I wasn't missing obvious stuff on the other side of the desk. Still find myself turning my head to talk to a monitor that isn't there sometimes though, old habits die hard.

finleybutler2d ago

My buddy runs an IT department and he told me something similar happened with their warehouse guys using those big touchscreen tablets. They thought the two-screen setup was making them faster but they were actually dropping inventory counts cause their eyes kept jumping between screens. It's like how people think listening to music helps them focus but then you realize you've been tapping your foot for twenty minutes instead of actually reading. We get so used to thinking more is better that we forget to check if it's actually working for us.