Item — HN Reader

>> to display multiple things simultaneously? If my email or social media feeds are available at a glance, then I’ll check them constantly

Just had no desire to read further, I started with the impression that there will be some strong arguments against multi monitor setup. May be for the author's needs a single monitor suffices, he earlier had a multi monitor setup, so he ended up using the excess which made him unproductive. That is not a multi monitor setup being useless problem, it is a problem of you not having a use case for multi monitor setup.

Of course if one is using a multi monitor setup to do multi tasking, that is not really recommended. But there are many tasks where a multi monitor setup makes you feel how you lived without one for long? Sample: When I work on an Xcode app, I have one primary 25" monitor fully dedicated to Xcode (IB, editor, inspectors etc) and the second 22" monitor dedicated to Xcode docs, browser with relevant docs/tabs (no email etc), terminal all arranged with Moom. Trying to do this on a 13/15" real estate will make me work at a snail's pace or even negative pace for the constant switching.

>> Deep work is becoming increasingly hard in our distraction

I think Cal Newport must be having a free healthy daily dose of laughter given every Tom is referring to Deep Work when talking about Focus!

7 comments

That top comment is the one that really invalidated most of the article. Multiple monitors is to give you enough screen real estate for all components of task. It is not to stream twitch and watch Twitter scroll as you try to write in a text editor.

Putting distractions in a separate 'workspace' and making conscious decisions to switch contexts is a good idea, but it isn't related to having a second monitor, IMO.

Seems pretty simple.

If you use extra screen real estate (on a big monitor of additional monitors) to get more interuptions (email, twitter, whatever) it's a loss.

If you use extra screen real estate to help keep you on task (i.e. source code, documentation, performance numbers, example code, etc) it's a win.

It's not really more complicated than that.

>>> to display multiple things simultaneously? If my email or social media feeds are available at a glance, then I’ll check them constantly

Actually, what is this social-media-at-work thingy?

Is this accepted in US? Elsewhere in Europe? Should it be?

Now you know why people are at work for so many hours in the US.

Europe too. I'm guilty of that myself; I always keep at least Messenger tab open (for communication with my SO) and I check HN frequently.

Let's be honest here: rare is a person who can do cognitively demanding work 8+ hours a day for longer stretches of time. Especially when that's a job, and not one's true life calling.

I also personally find it hard to completely ignore distractions just because of other people - it seems rude to tell them all to stop calling / mailing me during work hours, even though I try so hard.

> Let's be honest here: rare is a person who can do cognitively demanding work 8+ hours a day for longer stretches of time. Especially when that's a job, and not one's true life calling.

No one is capable of doing a full 8 hours of cognitively demanding work. I think Cal Newport detailed it out, but the most dedicated and focused people can achieve 6 hours of productive work. Most people can average 4. The 8 hours/day, 40 hour work week is a relic from manufacturing work that has carried over into the office. Between cubicles, open office layouts, meetings, the belief you have to be on premise to be productive, and the execs deluding themselves into thinking they're working the hardest, the US corporate area is not set up for productivity.

I also have Telegram running and I check HN when I am stuck.

I guess a few people misunderstood me. I'm not talking about 100% separation between work and personal life[0], I'm talking about being a programmer, discussing on HN how distractions and interruptions ruins flow - and then running twitter and what not in the workspace. What do I know: some of my habits are weird but works for me but this stuff sounds weird to me :-/

[0]: neither me, my wife nor my boss woukd like that - it's just too practical for my boss that I can make a note when inspiration strikes - outside of work, read work related materials whenever I come across them - even outside of work etc. My boss has stopped caring where I work from and when so as long as I work on my real job (working for a client now) I'll just work from home if my wife wworks night. I and my boss both make sure this is a win-win and my wife has an agreement to call twice or more if she needs to get hold of me before next time I check Telegram.

I have two chrome profiles on my work desktop. One, my work profile has gmail, calendar, drive, keep, spotify, and fb messenger pinned. The other has nothing pinned, but is logged in to reddit, hn, my personal email, youtube, etc.

I get my work done and no one seems to care.

Actually, what is this mobile-phone thingy?

Is it accepted in the US to check text messages immediately? Elsewhere in Europe? Should it be?

The OP just fails to abstract away from "social media" to "distractions pushed into your input feed".

At work, I use a single monitor with Windows 10 to avoid a few bugs and annoyances, such as one monitor not returning when unlocking the desktop, or having to rearrange all my windows onto the multiple screens when docking the laptop, or sometimes just when returning from a break.

To compensate for the lack of screen real-estate, I start by being an individual with great eyesight. (Thank you, LASIK from 2005.) I use a high-resolution monitor and zoom everything. I have 2-3 tall-and-thin browser windows open taking ~25% of the screen width and going top-to-bottom. A tall-and-thin console or 3, a tall-and-thin Notepad++ window, and RDCMan set to take ~45% of the screen, for Windows remote desktop sessions. All manually overlapping, so they are just a click away.

At home, I use a single HDTV for my gaming HTPC. I do everything else on the kitchen laptop, an old Lenovo T400. Both also zoomed as needed.

> At work, I use a single monitor with Windows 10 to avoid a few bugs and annoyances, such as one monitor not returning when unlocking the desktop, or having to rearrange all my windows onto the multiple screens when docking the laptop, or sometimes just when returning from a break.

I use Windows 7 and Windows 10 laptops that I dock with 2x 1080p monitors at home and the office. Both laptops remember the 4 displays uniquely and arrange things accordingly.

My work laptop will forget my window arrangement maybe once per week, maybe less than that. I mean, it restarts at least once a week and forgets everything, but there's nothing I can really do about that, so I don't fault the system for that.

However, my home laptop forgets window layouts constantly - basically every other time I unlock it. I don't know what's different between the two setups, and I've never bothered to spend any time trying to 'fix' it, but windows is kind of inconsistent on how it behaves. Windows 10 definitely makes multimonitors much better, though.

I guess you'd have enjoyed SCWM[0], a window manager built with the cassowary[1] as a backend: Window layouts could be constrainted to get effects like "If I move my emacs-window to top-left, the xterm with the log output on top right moves to the left and hides behind it, same for the other xterm on bottom left, which will go up and hide behind emacs." Adding state based on whether you are using a single-monitor setup or a laptop with an attached 42-display wall would have been added as yet another set of contraints.

[0] http://scwm.mit.edu/ (does not respond at the moment)

[1] http://constraints.cs.washington.edu/cassowary/

I've a windows 10 multi monitor set up, I've never experienced any of the issues you describe.

When you must read email or chat immediately, unhiding it compulsively and/or worrying that you might be missing an update is a far worse "multitasking" than concentrating on something useful until a notification pops up in a peripheral monitor.

I swapped a dual setup for one 34(?) inch ultra wide screen, which when combined with i3wm means I have the space I need to see different things at the same time, but without having to look too far.

If you like Moom, try Magnet, its like a better thought out Moom.

Having moved from Magnet (previously Window Magnet) to Moom some time ago, I fail to see how Magnet is "better thought out" when Moom can do whatever Magnet does as well as having the ability to also draw over a freeform grid and define custom layouts and grid sizes. The only thing Moom can't do is splitting in thirds on bottom edge drag. Both are great anyway.