Can you measure productivity in pixels? Some people (apart from LCD manufacturers) seem to think that more screen space == more productivity. But I've seen some evidence that convinces me that this is not always the case - in fact sometimes it can be counter-productive.
I have worked in (and visited) several offices where people have two screens (nearly always LCD screens) side by side. Apart from making me jealous, they made me wonder what it would be really useful for.
I personally can think of numerous benefits - one of the most common window configurations I use while coding is:
- Emacs: editing source code, usually with a dozen or so buffers
- xterm: one running the software under development and viewing debugging output, one for general shell operations, sometimes another for a database session
- Firefox: browsing API reference material, typically with many tabs open, and one window per related contextual group
I usually split this across two or three virtual screens, and hotkey between them. It is a fast method, but it could be faster. Imagine having two large LCD displays, with Emacs and xterms spread across the first, and Firefox on the second. You could simply glance back and forth between the code and the reference material, which would be quite a bit faster than flicking back and forth in virtual desktops.
Another useful scenario would be to have the Final Cut editing windows (timeline, media bins, settings, etc) on one screen, and a full-screen preview window on the second. Or a Blender screen, with multiple orthogonal views on the left and a full preview (maybe even live with enough grunt!) on the right. The list goes on...
So that's how I would use two screens. But what of this claim that it can be counter-productive? Because in many of the offices I have seen people with two screens, they have one screen as their primary workspace (often Word or Internet Explorer) and the second screen is a maximized window running Outlook.
It has been thoroughly documented how constantly checking your email can damage your prodictivity. In this age of instant communications, mobile phones, text messaging, instant messaging, Skype, pagers, Blackberry, email - people are instantly reachable in a wide variety of ways. But it's certainly not always good to be constantly and universally interruptible, or even welcome.
Imagine you are working intently, you are in the zone, you are productive and concentrating on your work. A single distraction can take you out of this productive zone, and it can take a good 10 minutes to return to your productive state. If you get distracted as little as 3 times in 1 hour, this can effectively halve your productivity! You will spend more time trying to return to your working context than doing anything useful!
So why do people actively invite distractions by having a 30" window full of messages demanding their attention, sitting there begging to be read? Making a "bing" sound with each incoming missive? Or worse - a cheery "You've got mail!" They are sacrificing 50% of their workspace to something that will inevitably gnaw away at their attention, and thus drastically reduce their productivity.
These are often the same people who have their inbox set to refresh every 10 minutes. Now unless you are a member of a crack emergency response team and wear a uniform with lots of pockets and reflective stripes, do you really need such a frequent and intrusive messaging system? The world probably won't fall apart if you don't respond to the latest "hey have you seen this?" or "who took my lunch from the 2nd floor fridge?". The number of emails that actually require response times in the order of minutes are, if we are honest with ourselves, negligible.
So - the advice from your humble author is: close your email client, and only check a couple of times a day. If you schedule breaks to deal with emails, your working sessions will be longer and more productive. Provided of course, you can keep away from certain other distractions. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Michael...)
I direct all kind readers (especially those of you who have your inbox refreshing in anything less than 1 hour intervals) to Merlin Mann on productivity and distractions. There is a veritable gold mine of useful articles and tips on his site.
