Guys, this is a well known and under utilized effect of human psycho physiology. Visually focusing on a single point, small object, or just small visual field (aka tunnel vision) increases mental focus.
AFAIK it’s also one of the reasons we all get “glued” to smartphone screens.
Ah, excellent! Some scientific evidence for my preferred setup: 2 x 9:16 27" monitors, one in front and one to the side. (Plus another display, of no specific kind. Laptop, landscape monitor, etc.)
I sit with my eyes about 1 metre from the screen, and a 27" portrait display is approx 33 cm wide. So I think that's tan(FOV/2) = 16.5/100 = 0.165; FOV/2 = atan 0.165; FOV/2 = 9.37 degrees; FOV = 2*9.37 = 18.74 degrees. It's almost perfect!
(But even if my maths is wrong: this has proven a good setup for me, which I've used for many years now, and I recommend it to anybody thinking of experimenting with their desk setup. Many monitors come with a stand that allows rotation, so it's not necessarily difficult to try. If you don't like it, you can always switch back.)
Of course, being an aging boomer, using an 85" monitor isn't decreasing my focus at all. I just look at the part of the screen I'm using at the moment.
Personally I find it helpful to be able to spread windows out on that giant screen so that any one of them is instantly available at a glance (and I still use 8 "desktops"). Of course, I also don't reboot, well maybe once or twice a year after a kernel update. So setting all those windows up isn't something I do every time I sit at the computer.
I do feel sorry for the generations born into internet brain damage (seriously). My son is GenZ and (thankfully) struggles with the typical symptoms less than others, but is still affected.
This is clearly a consequence of growing up with constantly network connected hand held computers, and the maliciously crafted web platforms that exploited that constant connectedness.
I spent decades completely happy with Cmd+Tab. Now I’m helping someone develop a trading system and I need to see several log files simultaneously, a broker GUI, and neovim.
Once I realized that in order to answer a single question I needed to Cmd+Tab at least four times, often more, I added two monitors and it’s dramatically lowered my stress level.
FYI, on older MacBooks you can’t add more than one extra screen, but if you get a DisplayLink dongle it works perfectly.
>but if you get a DisplayLink dongle it works perfectly.
LOL
Im currently typing this on a work issued Macbook thats about 2 years old at this point, and 40% of the time, when I plug in a cable, it decides it wants to turn on and turn off hdmi output in rapid succession.
I always use DisplayPort over USB-C DP-Alt (or Thunderbolt on some displays) and I literally never have a problem across various LG, Dell and Apple Studio Displays.
MacBook Pro M1 Pro or MacBook Pro M5
Sounds like something is really broken in your setup?
On the other hand, sleeping/waking Thunderbolt displays on my ThinkPad with Linux regularly leads to kernel panics, across several kernel versions.
M1 non-Pro could only support one external screen through TB, and I think it carried on through at least M2 Air. It would also frequently get my Dell screen into a weird hung state after suspending and attempting to reconnect, frequently requiring a power cycle of the screen (not even connecting a Linux laptop back to it got it fixed). At some point, it seems to have gotten fixed and I am not seeing it anymore.
Linux, however, has worked great ever since I got the USB-C DP Alt-mode screen back around 8 years ago with my Thinkpad X1 Carbons over the years. I do have trouble getting a stable 8K at 60Hz through it with Iris Xe (gen13), but that does not work with Macs either.
Linux did have issues with using different scaling factors on multiple connected screens, but I only ever used one monitor so it never bothered me.
On top of that, it still does support subpixel rendering, and you can even tune pixel layout (RGB, BGR...) for VA and OLED panels, so text never looks crappy or janky as it can on Macs with low DPI screens (eg. large 4k screens of 40"+, but noticeable even on 32" 4k).
Display over USB-C is very janky (as in very much depends on hardware in the display or the docking station that you use).
The only saving grace was that the Macbook has external HDMI which works flawlessly, just like it has been for the past decade on any laptop. But not all models of Macs have had external HDMI. My last one did not, and it was a piece of crap, that ended up also swelling the battery somehow.
Recent thinkpads are a bit of shit-tier laptops, and linux doesn’t help much (it’s not linux’s fault).
for personal use I gave up after almost twenty years of thinkpad+linux and got a MacBook neo. So far it’s been great, much much better than my shit-tier ryzen-based x13g1 with 8c/16t and 32gb RAM. (Edit: it’s also more reliable when driving my 34” 1440p external display).
I had used Linux since mid-1990s and gave it up for Apple Silicon. Not fighting my hardware/software has been great despite the diminution of Apple’s software stack.
Great example of "what works for you" I think - I'm in the camp of:
I did multiple monitors for a long time, and probably my best productivity thing was switching to one AND ONLY ONE big enough 4k. Basically allows me to switch between "one focused monitor most of the time" and "the equivalent of 2 or 3, maybe even 4" if I need it.
The reason I love my old cheap 1080p monitors so much is because they need less organizational overhead compared to a large 4k monitor where you constantly have to fix UI scaling bugs and zoom in/out, force different fonts for shitty web pages etc.
I am never gonna sway away from i3 [1], a notification free tiled window desktop system is just way too convenient. When I have to bootup a Windows VM for work (I am a malware analyst most of the time) I am losing my mind with all the notifications and blocking popup windows all the time. I have no idea why people are tolerating this as their work setup. It is hostile design to its users.
I use my computer to work. I don't want a computer that works me all the time.
[1] for desktop/GUI apps I use a mixture of GNOME forks and LXDE apps. Everything that makes popups when running in the background is avoided.*
“compared to a large 4k monitor where you constantly have to fix UI scaling bugs and zoom in/out, force different fonts for shitty web pages etc.”
counterpoint: this doesn’t appear the case with Apple, as they have defaulted their OS entirely to retina-level density now, removed subpixel rendering, and anything non-5K may look off (and you need to go through hoops to make it look well).
As such, I’m typing this in a MacBook with 3x5K displays connected.
Subpixel rendering has nothing to do with any of this: it was messing up on non-RGB pixel layout panels like VA and OLED, and it used to be a simple setting in GNOME (hidden these days unfortunately).
Still, even 5K at 27" is not without noticeable jagged edges in diagonal lines and textual characters (though I've only tried 4K at 24", but that's a similar DPI and angular resolution if at the same distance) if your visual acuity (with or without correction) is around 20/20 or better (mine is better with glasses/contacts).
I hate how the text looks with a Mac on a 4K 32" screen, let alone 4K 42" screen.
And I love my multi monitor setup, because each monitor has its own set of app, and I can remove window switching by a lot.
I put my browser on 2k monitor so no need to fight with resolution and other things
but IDE is always on 4k monitor, no scaling, slightly larger font size, so I can see more code. And all the log, and note app are on 3rd 1080p monitor.
And Wayland gnome was pretty solid for me, until recently gnome-shell eating over 2/3gb on long run. Switched to niri for the time being, which is working pretty solid.
I've seen 4K monitors in person. Disabling anti-aliasing (with full hinting enabled) on a 1080p monitor increases text sharpness to equal that of anti-aliased text on a 4K monitor. The only drawback is that the font no longer approximates the shape of printed text. This doesn't matter except in the outlier cases of Chinese and Japanese, which use some extremely visually intricate characters.
Yeah, I've moved back and forward between multiple monitors and a single one, multiple times throughout my professional career, depending on what I'm doing. Game development usually makes me end up using at least two monitors, just programming frontend/backend usually works best with a single monitor (for whatever reason), producing music and video editor also works best with at least two monitors, but other creative things like writing works best with one, and so on.
At least personally, there is not a single setup that works for everything, I'm switching basically as often as I change what I work on.
I was about to post something very similar: the degree of benefit you get from having multiple displays depends a lot on the amount of multi-tasking that you have.
If you can focus most of your time on a single window then a single monitor is just fine.
But when you have to reason across multiple windows very very often then multiple displays help a lot.
For me it’s a bit messy: i am a cloud engineer and the kind of work i do varies multiple times a day. At some point I’m writing terraform code and all i need is my editor and a shell (sometimes my editor is in my shell) while ten minutes later i might be doing incident response and then i need a multitude of windows (shell, web browser showing logs, web browser showing metrics, web browser showing the aws console, web browser showing the meeting with other people handling the incident with me, shell, other stuff)…
Similar job. My solution was a single 4k monitor and Stage Manager. I can tile viewing a log and having a terminal open, and then just pop back to a browser when I need to. Plus, terminal can have tabs.
When monitors were 1024 by 768, I needed more than one monitor. Now that everything is designed to be one’s only window at 1920 by 1080, I need a 4k monitor. I imagine that when 4k becomes the default, I will need a 16k monitor.
Workspaces solve this problem better. Cmd + 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 It's like having 10 monitors in a single one. Though if I remember right, the switch is inefficient on Mac OS, but there's some workaround to that.
Managing windows with OS idiosyncrasies becomes a task in itself.
However, I've also learned recently it depends what you're doing.
Software development, I just want one single maximized window on a single laptop monitor. If I have a near-retina DPI monitor with 120hz+ (I can't deal with low DPI fuzziness and low refresh all day) I'll usually have a 3-4 window layout on a single monitor with the IDE taking up half the screen.
There is a minor cognitive hit from switching focus between monitors for things like reading documentation, so I don't like doing that.
Music production? Man, I could probably use like 3+ monitors. Main stems view, a separate monitor for open VSTs, a separate monitor for video, a separate one for piano roll maybe. The window juggling gets really cumbersome on a single monitor.
My friend who is a professional musician (makes music for TV shows) uses 3 large TVs for music production.
> Do you not feel like there's a similar hit from switching full screen windows?
I feel like it should be, but in practice it isn't.
Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but switching between windows on the same screen has near-zero context loss.
I also use a 3x3 grid of workspaces (center one is browser, all the others are dedicated to a single project/context/session/task each), and navigating workspaces (modifier+shift+arrows) also has near-zero contextual hit.
Even more counter-intuitively, while a second screen produces a large and irritating context-switch cost, using a little (physical, pen-and-paper) notepad next to me has even less context-switch loss than switching windows or workspaces do. It happens without me even realising it - sometimes I'd arise from a long session of coding and be surprised at some notes I made while coding.
There's probably something learnable about the human mind in all of this.
Tiling merely changes the idiosyncrasies, and I say this as someone who primarily uses them. (hyprland in my case)
If you created a window right now, where will it go? Which window will it take its space from? Does it use your focused window? Your mouse position? If your WM supports mixed floating & tiling, how does it go when you flip a window between them? etc. That's all cognitive load when you aren't familiar and still requires some hand control when you are.
This is why I use no window management. Windows are arbitrary sizes of what I happened to drag out last time. Windows piled on top of eachother. Some stuff in the back of the pile dates back weeks. A couple other piles of various windows in other desktop spaces. I like to think it is like a messy desk. Maybe closer to how we think in real life. Like you the tiling was a lot of faff. What goes where, how big shoudl they be? How can I fit xyz on both these windows but they can only be 5 inches wide to fit it all on the screen? All that friction and mental load fades away with the pile of junk method of window management. You'd be surprised how easily you find things in that pile too.
After having tried many tiling window managers over the years, I have also come to the conclusion that the ‘pile of windows’ model (sometimes spread across desktops) works best for me.
The most important thing is to have a way to search through the pile. (Raycast window search is pretty good.)
I haven't used hyprland. I can answer your questions for XMonad, assuming you're using a typical standard layout.
> If you created a window right now, where will it go?
The new window becomes the focused window. It's inserted into the master position. Existing windows shift down the (conceptual) stack.
> Does it use your focused window?
It uses the same screen space, yes.
> Which window will it take its space from?
All of the other visible windows. It recomputes the tiles so that all tiles except the master become smaller, to make room for the new one.
> Your mouse position?
By default, mouse position is ignored. XMonad is keyboard-centric by design. You can set a mouse-follow configuration variable if you want. I've never tried it.
> If your WM supports mixed floating & tiling, how does it go when you flip a window between them?
It recomputes the tiles in much the same way as above. It's as though you deleted the window from the tiling and it becomes floating. And vice versa. It's a very consistent model.
I find it very natural and predictable. As far as "cognitive load" goes, that seems like an exaggeration, but again I haven't used hyprland.
If by "hand control" you mean using the mouse, that's definitely not needed for window management. In fact by default, XMonad doesn't even support resizing tiles using the mouse, and I've never tried to enable that. I do commonly use the mouse for switching focus, usually because I'm navigating to some location in another window anyway, in which case focus moves automatically.
I'm using Hyprland right now for its wayland support, but IMO so far the best mental model for window management I've seen is that of herbstluftwm with static layouts (you can still use dynamic tiling and tabs with it of course)
Yes, I tried a tiling window manager for about an hour and then stopped. It was absolute madness as the window size and positioning was seemingly random. I can't comprehend how anyone can use them
Used to use AwesomeWM for almost a decade before I forced myself to simplify to Gnome for other reasons, but I never felt like window sizing and positioning was random, it always opened in the logical place, which I kind of feel like is the whole value proposition of a window manager in the first place.
For curiosities sake, what window manager did you try?
I prefer desk based management. Windows like papers on my desk, piled on top of eachother peaking out from the sides. Seems chaotic but it is more aligned with how your brain works in the meatspace than looking at a bunch of things at once.
I’d say monitor position and ergonomics matter way more than screen size.
Navigating a stack of apps with alt+tab, ctrl+tab is extremely efficient. I only miss the extra space when looking at spreadsheets or comparing things in different windows.
Some laptops have a pitiful screen height, avoid those.
Ultrawide is an extra screen size that many web devs forget about. Good design can take advantage of it. But some fluid designs look terrible without constraints.
I ran a vertical setup, with a monitor above my laptop. Not a bad way to go if you want more space for auxiliary apps.
Focus is essential for productivity. Do whatever it takes to get there.
> Focus is essential for productivity. Do whatever it takes to get there.
I'm posting this because it's something I went through in my career and I hope it helps someone who is in a similar situation
I was undiagnosed ADHD until my 30s. In high school and university I was able to brute force my way through and get reasonably good grades. I had a really rocky start to my career in software. I was always getting middling performance reviews along the lines of "You're really good when you're working, but your productivity is terrible". Meanwhile my stress level was crazy high despite not exactly doing lots of overtime or anything else
Even treated, ADHD can make focus very difficult. Undiagnosed, it is devastating
Bringing it back to the words I quoted, I agree entirely. Focus is essential for productivity. Part of doing whatever it takes to get there might mean getting diagnosed and medicated
I think it's like for me moving to using Instagram in the browser instead of launching the app. Doesn't fight my addiction to doom scrolling directly, but it makes it awkward enough so that the small imposed friction reduces the urge with time.
If it works for you as it worked for me it's fine, but don't feel frustrated if you end up recreating bad habits in these kinds of setup. They can work but they don't really treat the root cause of the addiction.
My window management hack that I’m surprised I’ve not seen mentioned is that in macOS you can map each numpad key to a separate desktop. You essentially get a desktop control pad free with your keyboard, since I don’t know any SWE who uses needs their numpad.
My wish is that macOS would let you group desktops together in a way that solved both of these problems:
- Switching desktops across multiple monitors at once
- Merging and splitting desktops when going from multiple monitors to one monitor
Multiple desktops are critical to my workflow and how I mentally organize my digital workspace. I wish there was more customization or more powerful features around it.
Maybe I am just too fussy, but the sliding animation that comes from switching is so disorienting and slow to me. I use multiple desktops a lot and sometimes I need to dart back and forth pretty quick and my god does that blurry transition grate on me. It really makes it feel like I am using a dusty old computer instead of a brand new four thousand dollar top of the line machine.
I have found some hacky options to do this, but they are just too janky for my taste. I would love to have Apple implement this at the OS level so I don't need to keep experimenting with Aerospace/Rectangle/Hammerspoon... Apple please allow me to disable the destop transition animations and make your OS feel snappy for once.
My setup is similar: I use hyperkey (caps lock) + letters to switch between apps, that are (almost) always maximized. So I'm always focusing on one app at a time.
Yeah, you can't blame the monitor setup for distractions.
Up to a point, more screen real-estate is a universally good thing. Although beyond, say, two 24-27" screens or one great big one, you get into rapidly diminishing returns.
Yep, I just turn on the Leechblocker's lockdown mode which blocks all the distracting sites on my browser, I can focus on my work, without giving up any of my monitors, and all the advantages they provide me
I'm on the other side of this one. Two 27" 4k displays (at 2x scaling, so logical 1080p), always with editor on one screen, and documentation on the other.
This is true for programming (where editor = IDE and documentation = API docs for some thing or other), 3d modelling (where editor = CAD software, and documentation = reference drawings, diagrams, etc), and even gaming (where "editor" = Blue Prince, and "documentation" = a gigantic Obsidian vault with all my notes).
In all of those cases, I'm decidedly not multitasking. I have multiple applications running, but they're all contributing to the task at hand. Instead, I find that things having a fixed position in space they live in, and not needing to cmd-tab and find the right window/application are two things that help maintain focus.
It might be your better option, but it's not mine. I really value sharp text, and 4k@2x is vastly superior to 1440p. I really do miss my 5k iMac 27", but 60Hz doesn't cut it anymore these days, and I'm not about to drop £5k on a pair of Apple Studio Displays.
I find it useful to have multiple monitors or a large monitor that can support multiple windows comfortably useful for development, e.g. multi-pane IDE, terminals, documentation all visible simultaneously. The distraction problem is that everything else (slack, email, internet) is just a click away. I wonder if the answer is to treat the computer desktop like a real desktop that only supports having the materials open for one task at a time. So consciously switch tasks by putting the old things away and getting out the new things.
Maybe the fact that slack and outlook take a painful amount of time to open is a feature not a bug
> One day I was doing work on my laptop on a couch because hitting 30 apparently means that sleeping slightly incorrectly results in debilitating back pain.
A factor in my debilitating back pain for me (was 31 and fit; now 37; getting better) was coping with back pain by moving to unergonomic positions like the couch/bed, which led to different and thus compounding compensations, and thus more complex recovery.
Now if my back is painful in a position, I take it as a signal to move my body, not find another static position that doesn't cause pain.
That can sometimes be difficult to do, with job/family requirements though.
Sorry to derail the post, but I hope this helps someone avoid my issue.
I had the same kind of issues and moving a bit and doing little not so complex exercises helped a lot. I strongly recommend everyone. Health shall always be the first prio
I've been a laptop purist most of my life, and prefer to work outside my house / office. Only recently I got a Big Monitor™ for a mini pc. It's really messed with my head. Now when I look at my 15" laptop everything looks incredibly small. Not just that, but the scroll direction is opposite on the pc, so if I'm working side by side I find myself accidentally scrolling each one backwards, or actually typing into the wrong keyboard. Somehow I survived this long with just laptop screens and I don't think it's a mistake that my focus was preserved through that.
You can also configure the scroll direction on Windows (through the registry with 10, using the settings GUI with 11) and in Linux (depending your DE).
Similarly, laptop purist for the past 25 years. I so much prefer the focus of one thing on my screen at a time, and toggling between apps without having to shift eyes on a large monitor. I also like to pick up and work from starbucks or wherever. I feel like we are in the minority overall but I do know some like us.
To me, since I always need to have two apps side by side, a 34" screen have done wonders.
I have my main app as a regular 16/9 window, and the secondary on the side.
By putting the screen at the right distance and height, I don't have to move my head and my eyes just move a little to go through everything on the screen.
And my main window still give me more information than if I had full-screened it on my MBP 14" screen (typically, I can see my whole Jira dashboard on the 34" screen while I have to scroll on the 14").
On the other hand, having two screens (laptop + external) is terrible. Not the same resolution, having to turn the head...
------------
One thing that is bothering me reading the article: I find the whole clutter on OP's desktop quite distracting!
The cables coming out of the laptop, the things on the wall behind the laptop... That's something that would definitely kill my focus!
At the office and at home, I've put a blank wall/separator in front of me so the only thing in my vision is the screen.
Perhaps the problem isn't the BigScreen, it's the youtube video?
I normally run applications maximized on my 28" 4k, unless I need input from 2 applications at the same time, then I tile them.
Working from my work-issued 16" Macbook Pro or any other of my laptops is a pain because of the limited estate - it's hard to see patterns at a glance or get the whole context when I can only see 30 lines of text that is truncated at <=80 columns. Plus, the fact that the keyboard isn't detachable from the screen forces bad habits on the posture.
My main home office has 5 monitors, and i still have to swipe between desktops regularly. I used to have 6, but two ultrawides stacked one above the other was a bit painful and I developed a back pain after a while.
My on the road setup typically involves a folding portable monitor (asus zenscreen duo, or something to that effect - that is 2x 1080p). Easily enough, and I don't really see a decrease in my efficiency.
But I sometimes do long distance flights and then I code/work on a single screen. I absolutely can do the same thing that I can do with my 6 screen setup with almost not noticeable effect on productivity as well. Could it be that the extra screens are just useless and an illusion of added productivity?
I find real loss on a single screen in many cases; so much so that I'll get up and move downstairs to get the extra screens.
It really depends on what kind of work I'm doing - and if I'm on the plane, I'm going to likely do work that does well single-screen; replying to emails, dicking around on HN, etc.
But in maxscreen mode (or at least two screens) then I'm "doing" something on the main screen while looking at reference material, output, chat, other things on the second.
If I am writing backend code I am mostly in a single IDE window moving tabs with code files to other screens is working but is inconvenient.
When I work on frontend I much rather have preview on second screen and most likely reference next to it.
When writing documentation or requirements I cannot imagine working on a single screen as essentially I am integrating multiple data sources into one, like I need to see how app looks now and before release, what changed and still have my working space for draft.
Switching windows to quickly look up documentation is fine but when creating requirements having time to understand what needs to be in which place how it has to evolve I need to have it right there so that my imagination doesn’t runaway.
Interesting take. I regularly switch between just the laptop and my 3 monitor setup. Sometimes I feel like I could use a 4th one because there is just so much stuff to look at when developing. When I get to my laptop I sometimes feel like I can't be really productive on it. Having to tab all the time is not in itself an issue, but I keep getting lost when I have multiple instances of an app open - e.g. IDE. Say you have 3 projects open, I feel like I keep tabbing to the wrong one all the time.
But overall, I do like the idea that you don't actually have to see everything at once. Also takes focus away I guess.
I would love to see a study on this which tries to actually measure this.
I feel that tabbing to the wrong instance of an app is a problem that can be solved on the software level. It’s a nightmare on the default macOS app switcher. I use an app called Contexts as a solution and it works reasonably well. There seems to be some free and open source solutions as well.
I’m an adamant single-screen alt-tabber. I hardly ever even have two windows open side-by-side.
I’ve always felt that I can alt-tab 2-3 times per second and that it’s faster to not move my eyes. Why look at docs next to code when I can only read one at a time anyway? It’s also embedded in my muscle memory to switch to specific apps by Apple-space typing 2-3 characters. So Firefox is “Apple-space-fi”. It’s so fast I feel slowed by having apps side-by-side.
Anything that requires me dragging windows to their special place is a non-starter. To me that feels like playing with my food. I wonder if this is just because I type very quickly?
There's little need for multiple monitors if you can switch virtual desktops very easily and quickly. The best method I've found is using a switcher control in the corner of the screen that can be operated by the mouse wheel.
The corners of the screen are the easiest targets to hit because they have effectively infinite size (see Fitts's Law). The mouse wheel is the best input to use because the mouse wheel is always non-destructive in standard desktop GUI software (equivalent to HTTP GET, not HTTP PUT). So long as your switcher control does not wrap around, you can set your two most important desktops as the first and last desktops, and access them with no conscious thought by jerking your arm and blindly scrolling the mouse wheel.
I use a patched version of lxqt-panel for this. The official version wraps around while switching desktops with the mouse wheel. This is IMO a bad idea because you always have the option of clicking the numbers directly, so it doesn't save any time. I have all animations disabled (essential for this system to be tolerable). I use three virtual desktops, with the the middle one reserved for less important tasks. The middle one requires conscious thought to access because I have to scroll the mouse wheel more carefully. But when accessing the main two I scroll the mouse wheel fast enough that I don't notice it.
Theoretically it would be possible to have unconscious access to 8 desktops this way (mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down for all 4 corners) but I haven't implemented this because I'm happy with two.
I'm using two external 1440p displays at work and one 32" 4k at home (with a MBP). Mostly front-end development and music production at home.
Aerospace improved my productivity a lot on that front. My main apps/windows are now bound to an alt+key combination - I can easily switch without alt+tabbing like in the dark ages.
All my windows usually take up the full screen - I simply can't stand a window that doesn't fill the entire screen - not sure if that's some kind of OCD.
The cognitive load of managing apps and spaces was quite high at the beginning, but now it's just muscle memory. I do recognize that it's not for everyone, but works very well for me.
It depends what I'm working on. If it's a bunch of interdependent systems that involve a large amount of data, a giant monitor is better. If the giant monitor is being used to make visible more application surfaces (Slack, email, VS Code, etc.), it makes focus worse.
The biggest improvement I've found for my focus is to force myself to close any open tabs/windows that are not absolutely necessary roughly every two hours. I used to be one of those people with 800 tabs open in the browser and 20 application windows spread across 8 desktop spaces. Was a concentration mess. Requiring myself to "clean up" periodically has really helped.
I have a laptop to the side, and a bigger screen in front of me. And the laptop screen might as well be a picture frame: it adds no productivity gain, whatsoever. And it really confuses me. I have fond memories of my setup at work, in the result 2000's, with two big monitors on a desktop machine. I remember it working so well, and I just lost that feeling. Maybe because those were on equal footing, while the laptop screen now is the tiny little brother. Or, I'm just nostalgic and making up benefits that didn't really exist.
I used to use the laptop screen as slack/mail/calendar, and really, rather than helping in any way, it was probably more of a productivity sink: all the interrupts were conveniently more visible.
I do enjoy rocking multiple monitors, but even if I went to one, I'd still have to use a big monitor. My mind may be young but my almost 50 year old eyes aren't. (I actually run my 32 inch monitors in QHD mode)
This is what so few people realize. Size is relative viewing distance and pixel density. Small screens are designed to be viewed at decreased focal distances, making you more cross-eyed.
This was my secret weapon for years. My coworkers could never understand my focus and productivity and were always surprised when I said that it was due to working from a tiny laptop screen, and no more.
> How do you view HTML/Code/JSONs in other applications?
Not GP, but I'll be forever thankful to have been able to make my career focused on embedded software.
In my line of work there's nothing to view because there's no visual component at all. If my user(s) "see" the results of my work, then it means I've catastrophically fucked up.
I spend 90% of my time working in vim within XTerm.
The closest I get to UI/UX is a UART debugging interface.
Cmd+Tab skills! But mainly, its a matter of only ever doing one thing at a time and optimizing for that in lots of little ways.
This "rule" is especially useful now that I'm coding primarily through agents. Secret weapon number 2, while everybody else is getting burned out running ten agents at once and producing slop, while I'm now writing more (and better) code than ever.
Its funny to read these comments where people think that focus is something that they can attain.
Your secret weapon isnt the laptop. Your secret weapon is a combination of a) actually giving a fuck about what you are doing, and b) the vibe of the workspace that makes you enjoy doing what you are doing.
Focus comes from a reinforcement loop of happy hormones that come from doing what you are doing. You can't focus on things that you don't enjoy doing.
I'm not a SWE, and when I write code anymore it's just as a hobby. For work I'm in a business function and my 32" 4k monitor has been setup with 5-6 persistent windows since covid.
1. Center top: videoconferencing space. Approximately 1/3 width and 1/2 height of screen is used for Zoom/Meet/Teams.
2. Top left: chat (Slack now, previously Teams or Google Chat). Half height and 1/4 width.
3. Bottom left: Calendar (Zoom now, Google previously). Half height and 1/4 width.
4. Bottom center: primary browser window with dozens of tabs open, also used for email & calendar. 1/2 width and 1/2 height.
5. bottom right: Claude
6. Top right: working document(s). 1/3 width and 3/4 height. When I finish something, I'll close this, or occasionally move to a tab group in my primary browser.
This method of organization works pretty well and allows me to 1) get work done, 2) monitor comms, and 3) not miss meetings. If I need to focus and not allow others to disturb me, I'll just minimize the Slack & primary browser windows and make the working doc browser window(s) larger.
This is all plugged into a Macbook (14") that sits on my desk. The laptop screen contains a single browser window signed into a personal profile, and is used exclusively for non-work stuff -- mostly email.
I switched from dual monitor to single monitors with a tiling window manager. Same reason, I "flip" context far less and am less distracted. Even though there can be multiple programs on my screen at once, they are all relevant to the current tasks context so I find if I do get distracted by one, it's not like getting distracted from the whole context.
Previously I would be "alt-tabbing" and constantly losing focus. Like stepping through a doorway and forgetting why you came into that room.
Something that's helped me lately is setup alfred commands where various apps are bound to a combination key press. It's on my split keyboard and I can't recall but it's a combination of keys, but, I think ctrl+cmd+option (all on the right hand thumb cluster) and a letter where the letter is bound to an app
- z launches conductor (coding agents with worktrees)
- w launches wezterm
- f launches firefox
- c launches chrome
- d launches obsidian
- s launches slack
So I'll keep one of these full screened on the main monitor at all times. And then I've got maybe spotify open on the laptop usually which I generally ignore most of the day.
And if I need two apps I'll use rectangle to tile windows side by side
It seems like a minor thing but it's a less cognitively burdensome workflow for me as the day goes on than cmd tab would be.
Also here's the link to conductor, I'm not affiliated but really like their tool imperfections and all https://www.conductor.build/
I just upgraded to a 49" curved display because it lets me view everything I need _for the current task_ at one time.
One virtual desktop is Messages, Slack, and Outlook for all my comms needs.
Another is IDE & browser for development work.
Another is todo list, planner, notes, and browser for task management.
Having to constantly swap app between browser, email, IDE, slack, etc is interruptive. Being able to switch to a single-focus desktop with everything visible is much more productive for me and reduces context switching.
What's your viewing distance? I currently have a 32" at about 80cm or so. Did not like the 34" as it has actually less vertical space despite having more area technically.
My viewing distance is one-arm-length (kinda close), when I raise my arm my fingertips just touch the screen. Definitely closer than my previous monitor, as you need to sit within the curved-screen radius to be in the sweet spot.
Looks like it's 32:9 aspect ratio - it's this Samsung, it was on sale last week for $800: https://a.co/d/0f884LPO
I usually use center 2/3 of 27'' screen with just a single top-level window for a similar reason. That puts it up to around 20.5'' and around 6:5 aspect ratio. I don't find having many windows shown at the same competing for my attention more productive. I don't benefit from having multiple code columns shown at once that much either and would rather switch among tabs or windows via shortcuts.
* I feel the key message here is "single vs multiple windows", not small vs big monitor. I love my 32" curved monitor. I too switched from having three monitors to having just one big monitor and staying with one maximizing window majority of time.
It's also role dependant. I spent few years as ops manager and multiple windows and situational awareness / task parallelization were important. Not saying it's a good thing but it was the name of the game.
Even without task parallelization, multiple windows are important for some roles. If I'm transforming a working excel into executive slide, it's nice to have them both up. If you are good at taking notes, having teams meeting and one note up is a life saver and super power. Etc
But yes - I think core message is "do not assume that prevalent wisdom or what others do, works for your task, job, and personality". As another example, I think dark mode is cool, all my cool friends use it, and it does not work for me on majority of applications. And that's ok... Not everybody is cool like that :-)
An aside: I am generally good at keeping notes while in a meeting, and I have tried shared notes in One Note, but as soon as someone else edits something in the same spot, it creates a forked history requiring manual reconciliation: does this work for you?
I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.
Perhaps it's given away by "One" in the name (one simultaneous editor)? Or am I holding it wrong?
For shared artifacts we use word, excel or PowerPoint in corporate onedrive and it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats - you can't usually edit the same exact box at the same time, and it can get confused with offline changes by multiple people. But online changes by multiple simultaneous people seems to work really well. I especially enjoy when one person is presenting slides, an executive makes a suggestion, and another team member makes the change real time on the same deck and it shows up in presentation.
We are just starting to experiment with some shared onenote notebooks, it seems to have a bit more learning curve and needs more discipline and structure than the rest of ms office.
one thing I've noticed with the "single ultra wide monitor" vs multiple smaller ones is that if I maximize something on the ultra wide the "important" part is often off to the left, not centered.
I actually redesigned my desk a bit so my ultra wide's left side is directly in front of me to compensate for this, which is a bit weird, but ... it's working so far.
Author here, I've actually worn glasses since I was 8. :)
That's why I highlighted GNOME getting usable fractional scaling out of the box, it makes all the difference. Previously I relied on the large text accessibility feature, but toggling it on/off depending on what monitor I used was a pain.
I'm actually nearsighted enough that I don't need readers, at least not yet. But my ability to accommodate has diminished, and as far away as I sit from the screen the myopia starts to kick in and even with corrective lenses it becomes difficult to resolve small text because my eyes can no longer make fine focus adjustments. So yes please, big-ass screen, big-ass fonts.
I have ADHD. I use a single 24 inch monitor. It is easier for me to have every window maximised. I'm seemingly the only person in the company that does this. Alt+tab is my friend
When I was in IT I had a second monitor, but I only ever put terminals and rdp screens for remote computers on it. This screen my machine, other screen other machine.
I gave up my monitor pre-covid, a few years earlier than that actually, and have not looked back.
The only thing that does make me wonder at times is that my video in a zoom'ish app looks different than other people's video in some manner, but all that means is that maybe I need 1 backup and mirrored display for video calls, but maybe I can live with it.
Went the opposite direction for a while, two monitors, then came back to one. The context switching between screens was costing more than the extra screen real estate was giving. Single monitor forces you to be more deliberate about what deserves your attention right now.
Sometimes things are so obvious to me I don't even think they'd be worthy of a discussion. But this is one of my blind spots, as I've come to realize over many years.
For development, I've always been happy with a 13" screen and nothing else. Not only that, but having all apps in full screen. It brings so much clarity to my mind. Exceptions (because f*ck dogma, right?) have been when I was in charge of monitoring some long-running process, in which case a secondary screen in vertical layout was very useful. Another one was for music making with Ableton Live: 2 screens was much more practical, independently of each individual screen size.
Just because of the setups I've just described, I've been looked at weird, or asked way too much questions. go figure.
For me anything bigger then 27' is just too big. I also stopped working with two monitors.
Main thing that was contributing to that is Cosmic desktop environment is has amazing defaults and adaptive scaling and if I need two displays just put window in second workspace.
For years, I resisted even using an external monitor, preferring to work on my laptop's monitor instead. I finally switched to using a monitor when poor posture started getting uncomfortable.
I almost always have just one window on the screen, maximized. I'm also using virtual desktops to switch between the browser/app and the IDE. This kind of setup really helps me with the focus, but at the same time it's not too annoying.
I used to just use the macOS virtual desktops, but with the Apple Silicon transition, they also added annoyingly slow animation for desktop switching. That can not be turned off (seriously, wtf, Apple?). I jumped to FlashSpace the second I found about it.
I prefer big, high-resolution monitors at appropriate distance (I am at 4k 43" at roughly 36"/90cm viewing distance in my home office and 32" at 28"/70cm at work) to be able to put all task-related content on the same screen.
I need to do cross referencing quite a bit, and even with quick iterations in development, I like having documentation and output (terminal, browser...) side by side with Emacs as my IDE (I don't use Emacs' built-in window management as much, but it'd be the same thing).
Using large 16:9 screens ensures I keep enough vertical space compared to ultra-wides, and high res is crucial for smooth text (scaled properly).
I'm super productive on a 28" with yt constantly open slightly hidden behind the terminal window. EDM, chess videos, speedrun videos, having them in the background actually reduces boredom and lets me achieve more. Laptop is on the side with slack in case there is an alert or an important message.
That said, shout out to the well being app that comes with the latest gnome version! I allow it to force me to get up and walk around for five minutes at awkward times. I do light exercises like push ups and australian pull ups or get coffee while I wait. Being forced off the computer while I'm trying to focus actually makes the day more interesting.
I can't stay "in the zone" while waiting for Claude. On the other hand whenever I'm blocked on something, I just ask it and get my answer way earlier than I would if I used a search engine.
I was actually wondering about this a few months ago; if big monitors work against focus. There is something zen about having a limited amount of screen real estate & focusing on 1 thing at a time.
I have always avoided multiple monitor setups for this reason, however, I don't think the size of my monitor affects things as much as my usage of it.
Have you tried using a big monitor but just keeping windows as full-screen? I find this to be much less distracting. And of course, phone face down and notifications turned off.
Not my app, but I'll plug Dayflow here (YC backed). It's really great for measuring what you're working on, and they have local only mode for full privacy.
There is something powerful about environment and what it does to our minds. For the author, giving up the monitor is totally valid and may work for many people. I can often convince myself to chance a habit by adding a simple extra physical step. This is harder on a computer. It takes discipline to not just end up with dozens of windows and even more browser tabs in some roles. I just aggressively close windows when starting a new task or thinking. Most likely you don't need whatever you are closing :)
Is the poster sure or have they checked that the gains and perceived higher level of focus are not just because of the Change? Rather than the actual change? Maybe in a few months a bigger monitor will suddenly work better not because its bigger but because its a change?
Personally i love a big monitor, i use 32” screens (but only 1 at a time) on my
Mac, pc and gaming pc. But in reality i do most ‘real work’ on my 16” mbp. And i drop the res to make everything bigger snd nice to read on the laptop.
I've tried every set up that I have the privilage of having:
- 11in Macbook Air
- 16in Macbook Pro
- 1 X 27in monitor mounted with MB Pro in clamshell mode
- Linux Mint desktop on old Dell Inspiron with 4gb of RAM
and after using all of these to try and increase my productivity, I'm still an unfocused and possibly ADD riddled human. I'm not cut from the same cloth as my other productive peers who do not watch much YouTube and can type away at a black `vim` terminal on one half of their screen with software documentation on the other half of the screen.
>I'm not cut from the same cloth as my other productive peers who do not watch much YouTube and can type away at a black `vim` terminal on one half of their screen with software documentation on the other half of the screen.
What stops you? Have you tried ripping the bandaid off, putting documentation on one screen and vim on the other? Putting your cellphone in a drawer across the room? Pulling the plug on your router if need be?
Better to proclaim on the internet that you are special and ADD than just doing the work. I mean, who even are you if you dont have an ‘ism of some sort these days? (Almost always self diagnosed)
The MacOS window manager is so bad that I've resorted to three monitors plus the built in screen. Two monitors have fullscreen terminal emulators and the last has the browser. The built-in screen handles all the distracting stuff whenever I can be bothered to look down at it.
With Xmonad I had 10 spaces on a single laptop screen (actually however many I wanted) with the flick of a button. And yes, I know about hacks like aerospace and the others that require disabling system integrity
If you were using a maximised app per workspace, I recommend setting up Hammerspoon for quick app switching. I have hyper + J for terminal, hyper + K for browser and so on. No space switching, but since each app occupies the full screen, it doesn't matter.
I went the opposite direction. I'm running a 45" LG UltraGear curved ultrawide OLED at 3440x1440. At first I thought the real estate would make me more productive. What actually happened is I have apps spread across the whole thing and spend more time rearranging windows than working. The article makes a fair point — a smaller screen forces you to commit to one thing at a time. I'm not ready to give mine up, but I can't argue with the logic."
> One day I was doing work on my laptop on a couch because hitting 30 apparently means that sleeping slightly incorrectly results in debilitating back pain.
I went from triple 1440p to just two, but I am going to go back. I guess it al depends on the type of work you do. I know managers that just use their phone.
I used to have 3 4K monitors. At some point this has become highly irritating messy. Now all my desktop PCs have single 32" 4K monitor and no scaling. This is "small" enough to keep my focus and yet large enough to arrange windows in a manner I like. Main being development IDE vertically on the right and the UI I debug / test vertically on the left be it browser or pure desktop app.
For a long time at my previous job, I had an empty desk that I would deploy my laptop onto every morning, then pack and leave the desk empty again when I left. People jokingly asked whether I had been fired when they saw the empty desk. A regular 15" screen and no clutter in my field of view greatly improved my concentration.
> too easy to put YouTube running on the left side, and whatever else on the right.
After reading the first sentences, I knew this was going to come up. I have an ultrawide screen but never watch videos next to my work. It just doesn’t work. When I’m working, I want to be productive. Somehow it’s also really bad for the brain to put things side by side as anyone I know who does this has poor focus
100% in agreement. Trying to get rid of my 32" 4K. Too much head panning and scanning. I want to comfortably see the entire screen without effort at less than 12 inches away. Creatives likely get some benefit with large displays, but for people who read, code, do productive stuff, it's too much screen, too much pixels.
27" @ WQHD res seems just about right. 4K if you absolutely must.
> I want to comfortably see the entire screen without effort at less than 12 inches away.
I wouldn’t use a display from this close. It’s better for my eyes to have a larger display a little further away. I’m closer to 30” with a 32” and another desk with a 38”
> but for people who read, code, do productive stuff, it's too much screen, too much pixels.
I do all of those things and find the opposite. So it would seem it’s more down to individual preference.
> WQHD res seems just about right.
I would dislike this. Especially for text and even more at closer distances.
Working without 3 monitors or maybe a good tiled ultrawide feels just like digging a hole with a spoon.
But I'm the type of developer that needs videos or music on the side that the work is not just boring enough to stop it. Has nothing todo with the work itself that I do. When it gets difficult I can press the pause button.
Niri is so good. The spatialized layout really keeps me aware of where I need to go.
I do wish it had virtual outputs though. Such that we can either combine screens to form a big monitor, or subdivide a screen to make multiple outputs. I have been doing some coding on a 42" OLED tv, and I really want both a side tray and an overhead output. There's stilch which does this; I wonder if River is capable enough to do something similar. https://github.com/wegel/stilch
I've used a cheap 50" TV as monitor for almost a decade now and I can't complain. Sight is 20/20 at 60yo, no eye strain, no headaches, nothing. I only use it for coding (sublime) and browsing (brave), so I don't care about resolution/retina/pixels/colors/curvature/etc.
It all depends. I couldn’t work on a large screen, but having two is good, so I can have the code on one and the notes / web research/ AI discussions on the second. Constantly alt-tabbing means constant focus changes, I can’t see how that can improve focus, but if it works for the poster, great.
Hmmm, I have been thinking about this too. 10 years ago I was more productive when all I had was a bottom of the barrel 21 inch Benq monitor instead of the 3 big monitors I use now. Maybe I was younger. Or maybe I should just switch back to my old screen for a few days, and see what happens...
> On a 34" ultrawide monitor, it was too easy to put YouTube running on the left side
This has zero to do with an ultra-wide monitor and all to do with a lack of self-discipline.
I bought one of the first 38" ultra-wide monitor that came out from LG and, ten years later, I'm still rocking on it every day.
You know what? My main computer doesn't even have sound. You read that correctly. No sound. So no Youtube vids. No games. Not that I'd be tempted: but because I've got actually zero need for sound on that machine.
And I'm no luddite: I've got two servers at home, more in datacenters, countless Pi's, NUCs, and laptops. But on my work machine: it is no sound and a 38" ultra-wide.
If you need to use a monitor the size of a stamp to make sure you can't run youtube vids at the same time you're working, the issue is you, not the monitor.
Thanks for this. I enjoyed this more "informal" type of article :)
I'm sort of the opposite. I've been using my small laptop screen for ages and want to try a bigger monitor to see how it feels.
I recently got rid of my 27in vertical monitor that I had been using for years. I found I was getting really stressed lately and feeling closed in at my desk. Getting rid of it has improved my mental health at work, no idea why it suddenly became an issue the last year as I used to have 3 when I was a twenty something.
I use one 24 inch monitor with my laptops, and keep all the interruptions like Messages/Signal and Mail on the smaller screen. Nothing else generates notifications.
Went from ultrawide back to my 27 inch monitor and definitely feel more focused. Having everything open "just in case" was killing my output. Nothing alt+tab can't fix.
Same here, I've found a single (not too big) monitor to be best for ergonomics.
Still keep a second monitor around, but it's exclusively for screen sharing.
Speaking of, having a dedicated monitor for sharing is really nice:
- It can have a standard resolution and aspect ratio (1080p) which is perfect for sharing
- It is a clean slate. I only share stuff I consciously move to that monitor. No need to clear my screen or burden my colleagues with unrelated windows in our call.
- Yes app sharing exists, but screen sharing is just more reliable and works better for sharing multiple things sequentially/simultaneously.
I feel the same way. In general, I prefer working on a couch with my laptop. My eyes aren't great and I end up ruining my posture at a desk, invariably.
How far away from it do you sit? I don't get neck pain, but I do have to move my head even on a 32", thinking of switching back to a 27" for that reason (plus better pixel density.)
My eyes are 30" to 36" away from the monitor. The original reason for getting a big monitor was the idea that looking at something that far relaxes the ciliary muscles in the eye. I don't have to turn my neck at this distance and I don't get any headaches even if I stare at it for 10+ hours/day though my original point still stands which is I end up using only the center of the monitor.
Solid advise but I think that it is less known that tight glutes can cause lower back pain too even when your BMI is normal. Basically sitting too much and not stretching enough is a cause for the pelvic misalignment.
went from 27" Mint to 13" Mac Book Neo. I'm extreme astonished how this has changed my workflow. Smaller screen realy works better for me. The change from Mint to MacOS was not hard and most programs are the same.
Guys, this is a well known and under utilized effect of human psycho physiology. Visually focusing on a single point, small object, or just small visual field (aka tunnel vision) increases mental focus.
AFAIK it’s also one of the reasons we all get “glued” to smartphone screens.
In this paper, more than 20 deg visual field for a screen and subject performance went down: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...
Ah, excellent! Some scientific evidence for my preferred setup: 2 x 9:16 27" monitors, one in front and one to the side. (Plus another display, of no specific kind. Laptop, landscape monitor, etc.)
I sit with my eyes about 1 metre from the screen, and a 27" portrait display is approx 33 cm wide. So I think that's tan(FOV/2) = 16.5/100 = 0.165; FOV/2 = atan 0.165; FOV/2 = 9.37 degrees; FOV = 2*9.37 = 18.74 degrees. It's almost perfect!
(But even if my maths is wrong: this has proven a good setup for me, which I've used for many years now, and I recommend it to anybody thinking of experimenting with their desk setup. Many monitors come with a stand that allows rotation, so it's not necessarily difficult to try. If you don't like it, you can always switch back.)
So that's why Counter-Strike pros are nose-to-the-monitor close to their screens.
Example of player Yekindar: https://preview.redd.it/yekindar-xd-v0-zsm7fzd5jd5e1.jpeg?wi...
"I need you to be focused!"
Moving closer to the screen would increase the FOV.
Here on HN, this should obviously be considered a market opportunity!
I'm considering a startup to make millennial blinders:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinders
Of course, being an aging boomer, using an 85" monitor isn't decreasing my focus at all. I just look at the part of the screen I'm using at the moment.
Personally I find it helpful to be able to spread windows out on that giant screen so that any one of them is instantly available at a glance (and I still use 8 "desktops"). Of course, I also don't reboot, well maybe once or twice a year after a kernel update. So setting all those windows up isn't something I do every time I sit at the computer.
I do feel sorry for the generations born into internet brain damage (seriously). My son is GenZ and (thankfully) struggles with the typical symptoms less than others, but is still affected.
This is clearly a consequence of growing up with constantly network connected hand held computers, and the maliciously crafted web platforms that exploited that constant connectedness.
Yeah I do find it easier and less tiresome to read on my phone.
I spent decades completely happy with Cmd+Tab. Now I’m helping someone develop a trading system and I need to see several log files simultaneously, a broker GUI, and neovim.
Once I realized that in order to answer a single question I needed to Cmd+Tab at least four times, often more, I added two monitors and it’s dramatically lowered my stress level.
FYI, on older MacBooks you can’t add more than one extra screen, but if you get a DisplayLink dongle it works perfectly.
>but if you get a DisplayLink dongle it works perfectly.
LOL
Im currently typing this on a work issued Macbook thats about 2 years old at this point, and 40% of the time, when I plug in a cable, it decides it wants to turn on and turn off hdmi output in rapid succession.
I always use DisplayPort over USB-C DP-Alt (or Thunderbolt on some displays) and I literally never have a problem across various LG, Dell and Apple Studio Displays.
MacBook Pro M1 Pro or MacBook Pro M5
Sounds like something is really broken in your setup?
On the other hand, sleeping/waking Thunderbolt displays on my ThinkPad with Linux regularly leads to kernel panics, across several kernel versions.
M1 non-Pro could only support one external screen through TB, and I think it carried on through at least M2 Air. It would also frequently get my Dell screen into a weird hung state after suspending and attempting to reconnect, frequently requiring a power cycle of the screen (not even connecting a Linux laptop back to it got it fixed). At some point, it seems to have gotten fixed and I am not seeing it anymore.
Linux, however, has worked great ever since I got the USB-C DP Alt-mode screen back around 8 years ago with my Thinkpad X1 Carbons over the years. I do have trouble getting a stable 8K at 60Hz through it with Iris Xe (gen13), but that does not work with Macs either.
Linux did have issues with using different scaling factors on multiple connected screens, but I only ever used one monitor so it never bothered me.
On top of that, it still does support subpixel rendering, and you can even tune pixel layout (RGB, BGR...) for VA and OLED panels, so text never looks crappy or janky as it can on Macs with low DPI screens (eg. large 4k screens of 40"+, but noticeable even on 32" 4k).
Display over USB-C is very janky (as in very much depends on hardware in the display or the docking station that you use).
The only saving grace was that the Macbook has external HDMI which works flawlessly, just like it has been for the past decade on any laptop. But not all models of Macs have had external HDMI. My last one did not, and it was a piece of crap, that ended up also swelling the battery somehow.
Recent thinkpads are a bit of shit-tier laptops, and linux doesn’t help much (it’s not linux’s fault).
for personal use I gave up after almost twenty years of thinkpad+linux and got a MacBook neo. So far it’s been great, much much better than my shit-tier ryzen-based x13g1 with 8c/16t and 32gb RAM. (Edit: it’s also more reliable when driving my 34” 1440p external display).
I had used Linux since mid-1990s and gave it up for Apple Silicon. Not fighting my hardware/software has been great despite the diminution of Apple’s software stack.
DisplayPort over DP Alt Mode != DisplayLink. DisplayLink is a way to send compressed video streams over a normal USB connection.
Yes, I never said so. I was suggesting to use DP-Alt mode instead (if they have a MacBook without HDMI, even if they had, I'd still prefer DP-Alt).
Great example of "what works for you" I think - I'm in the camp of:
I did multiple monitors for a long time, and probably my best productivity thing was switching to one AND ONLY ONE big enough 4k. Basically allows me to switch between "one focused monitor most of the time" and "the equivalent of 2 or 3, maybe even 4" if I need it.
The reason I love my old cheap 1080p monitors so much is because they need less organizational overhead compared to a large 4k monitor where you constantly have to fix UI scaling bugs and zoom in/out, force different fonts for shitty web pages etc.
I am never gonna sway away from i3 [1], a notification free tiled window desktop system is just way too convenient. When I have to bootup a Windows VM for work (I am a malware analyst most of the time) I am losing my mind with all the notifications and blocking popup windows all the time. I have no idea why people are tolerating this as their work setup. It is hostile design to its users.
I use my computer to work. I don't want a computer that works me all the time.
[1] for desktop/GUI apps I use a mixture of GNOME forks and LXDE apps. Everything that makes popups when running in the background is avoided.*
“compared to a large 4k monitor where you constantly have to fix UI scaling bugs and zoom in/out, force different fonts for shitty web pages etc.”
counterpoint: this doesn’t appear the case with Apple, as they have defaulted their OS entirely to retina-level density now, removed subpixel rendering, and anything non-5K may look off (and you need to go through hoops to make it look well).
As such, I’m typing this in a MacBook with 3x5K displays connected.
Subpixel rendering has nothing to do with any of this: it was messing up on non-RGB pixel layout panels like VA and OLED, and it used to be a simple setting in GNOME (hidden these days unfortunately).
Still, even 5K at 27" is not without noticeable jagged edges in diagonal lines and textual characters (though I've only tried 4K at 24", but that's a similar DPI and angular resolution if at the same distance) if your visual acuity (with or without correction) is around 20/20 or better (mine is better with glasses/contacts).
I hate how the text looks with a Mac on a 4K 32" screen, let alone 4K 42" screen.
And I love my multi monitor setup, because each monitor has its own set of app, and I can remove window switching by a lot.
I put my browser on 2k monitor so no need to fight with resolution and other things
but IDE is always on 4k monitor, no scaling, slightly larger font size, so I can see more code. And all the log, and note app are on 3rd 1080p monitor.
And Wayland gnome was pretty solid for me, until recently gnome-shell eating over 2/3gb on long run. Switched to niri for the time being, which is working pretty solid.
In sway + Wayland, these UI scaling bugs are fixed
KDE + Wayland is fine, too... except in some Java apps and LibreOffice with its ancient crap toolkit.
Firefox, MS Edge (my MS Teams sandbox) and any GTK apps do work.
Yeah, I don't have UI scaling bugs with Niri + Wayland.
... while other bugs are introduced :-/
Can't switch because of old hardware and vulkan/mesa legacy reasons.
1080p is plenty for text-based work if you're not using Chinese or Japanese. It looks as sharp as 4K when you disable text anti-aliasing.
It absolutely doesn’t look as sharp as 4k, even on 22” inch screen
I've seen 4K monitors in person. Disabling anti-aliasing (with full hinting enabled) on a 1080p monitor increases text sharpness to equal that of anti-aliased text on a 4K monitor. The only drawback is that the font no longer approximates the shape of printed text. This doesn't matter except in the outlier cases of Chinese and Japanese, which use some extremely visually intricate characters.
Yeah, I've moved back and forward between multiple monitors and a single one, multiple times throughout my professional career, depending on what I'm doing. Game development usually makes me end up using at least two monitors, just programming frontend/backend usually works best with a single monitor (for whatever reason), producing music and video editor also works best with at least two monitors, but other creative things like writing works best with one, and so on.
At least personally, there is not a single setup that works for everything, I'm switching basically as often as I change what I work on.
I was about to post something very similar: the degree of benefit you get from having multiple displays depends a lot on the amount of multi-tasking that you have.
If you can focus most of your time on a single window then a single monitor is just fine.
But when you have to reason across multiple windows very very often then multiple displays help a lot.
For me it’s a bit messy: i am a cloud engineer and the kind of work i do varies multiple times a day. At some point I’m writing terraform code and all i need is my editor and a shell (sometimes my editor is in my shell) while ten minutes later i might be doing incident response and then i need a multitude of windows (shell, web browser showing logs, web browser showing metrics, web browser showing the aws console, web browser showing the meeting with other people handling the incident with me, shell, other stuff)…
So yeah, it really depends.
Similar job. My solution was a single 4k monitor and Stage Manager. I can tile viewing a log and having a terminal open, and then just pop back to a browser when I need to. Plus, terminal can have tabs.
When monitors were 1024 by 768, I needed more than one monitor. Now that everything is designed to be one’s only window at 1920 by 1080, I need a 4k monitor. I imagine that when 4k becomes the default, I will need a 16k monitor.
I am somewhat surprised by how long 1080p being the standard has stuck.
People often seem shocked that I use mostly 4K screens, but I've had one of them for almost 10 years now.
It also seems that 8K has died for now. I think we still have time.
Workspaces solve this problem better. Cmd + 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 It's like having 10 monitors in a single one. Though if I remember right, the switch is inefficient on Mac OS, but there's some workaround to that.
M-x on a tiling window manager. I agree Cmd+Tab / Ctrl+Tab is inefficient. Linear vs constant time context switch.
I learned this lesson a couple decades ago.
Managing windows with OS idiosyncrasies becomes a task in itself.
However, I've also learned recently it depends what you're doing.
Software development, I just want one single maximized window on a single laptop monitor. If I have a near-retina DPI monitor with 120hz+ (I can't deal with low DPI fuzziness and low refresh all day) I'll usually have a 3-4 window layout on a single monitor with the IDE taking up half the screen.
There is a minor cognitive hit from switching focus between monitors for things like reading documentation, so I don't like doing that.
Music production? Man, I could probably use like 3+ monitors. Main stems view, a separate monitor for open VSTs, a separate monitor for video, a separate one for piano roll maybe. The window juggling gets really cumbersome on a single monitor.
My friend who is a professional musician (makes music for TV shows) uses 3 large TVs for music production.
> There is a minor cognitive hit from switching focus between monitors for things like reading documentation, so I don't like doing that.
Do you not feel like there's a similar hit from switching full screen windows? Or is your documentation within your full screen IDE?
> Do you not feel like there's a similar hit from switching full screen windows?
I feel like it should be, but in practice it isn't.
Sounds counter-intuitive, I know, but switching between windows on the same screen has near-zero context loss.
I also use a 3x3 grid of workspaces (center one is browser, all the others are dedicated to a single project/context/session/task each), and navigating workspaces (modifier+shift+arrows) also has near-zero contextual hit.
Even more counter-intuitively, while a second screen produces a large and irritating context-switch cost, using a little (physical, pen-and-paper) notepad next to me has even less context-switch loss than switching windows or workspaces do. It happens without me even realising it - sometimes I'd arise from a long session of coding and be surprised at some notes I made while coding.
There's probably something learnable about the human mind in all of this.
> Managing windows with OS idiosyncrasies becomes a task in itself.
Tiling window managers are a good solution.
Tiling merely changes the idiosyncrasies, and I say this as someone who primarily uses them. (hyprland in my case)
If you created a window right now, where will it go? Which window will it take its space from? Does it use your focused window? Your mouse position? If your WM supports mixed floating & tiling, how does it go when you flip a window between them? etc. That's all cognitive load when you aren't familiar and still requires some hand control when you are.
This is why I use no window management. Windows are arbitrary sizes of what I happened to drag out last time. Windows piled on top of eachother. Some stuff in the back of the pile dates back weeks. A couple other piles of various windows in other desktop spaces. I like to think it is like a messy desk. Maybe closer to how we think in real life. Like you the tiling was a lot of faff. What goes where, how big shoudl they be? How can I fit xyz on both these windows but they can only be 5 inches wide to fit it all on the screen? All that friction and mental load fades away with the pile of junk method of window management. You'd be surprised how easily you find things in that pile too.
After having tried many tiling window managers over the years, I have also come to the conclusion that the ‘pile of windows’ model (sometimes spread across desktops) works best for me.
The most important thing is to have a way to search through the pile. (Raycast window search is pretty good.)
The word you're looking for is "spatial interface".
http://www.bytebot.net/geekdocs/spatial-nautilus.html
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/
I haven't used hyprland. I can answer your questions for XMonad, assuming you're using a typical standard layout.
> If you created a window right now, where will it go?
The new window becomes the focused window. It's inserted into the master position. Existing windows shift down the (conceptual) stack.
> Does it use your focused window?
It uses the same screen space, yes.
> Which window will it take its space from?
All of the other visible windows. It recomputes the tiles so that all tiles except the master become smaller, to make room for the new one.
> Your mouse position?
By default, mouse position is ignored. XMonad is keyboard-centric by design. You can set a mouse-follow configuration variable if you want. I've never tried it.
> If your WM supports mixed floating & tiling, how does it go when you flip a window between them?
It recomputes the tiles in much the same way as above. It's as though you deleted the window from the tiling and it becomes floating. And vice versa. It's a very consistent model.
I find it very natural and predictable. As far as "cognitive load" goes, that seems like an exaggeration, but again I haven't used hyprland.
If by "hand control" you mean using the mouse, that's definitely not needed for window management. In fact by default, XMonad doesn't even support resizing tiles using the mouse, and I've never tried to enable that. I do commonly use the mouse for switching focus, usually because I'm navigating to some location in another window anyway, in which case focus moves automatically.
I'm using Hyprland right now for its wayland support, but IMO so far the best mental model for window management I've seen is that of herbstluftwm with static layouts (you can still use dynamic tiling and tabs with it of course)
Yes, I tried a tiling window manager for about an hour and then stopped. It was absolute madness as the window size and positioning was seemingly random. I can't comprehend how anyone can use them
Used to use AwesomeWM for almost a decade before I forced myself to simplify to Gnome for other reasons, but I never felt like window sizing and positioning was random, it always opened in the logical place, which I kind of feel like is the whole value proposition of a window manager in the first place.
For curiosities sake, what window manager did you try?
Tiling window manager means relying heavily on workspaces. You distribute the windows over workspaces.
And most algorithms for management are deterministic. The position and the size of the new windows is always known.
I prefer desk based management. Windows like papers on my desk, piled on top of eachother peaking out from the sides. Seems chaotic but it is more aligned with how your brain works in the meatspace than looking at a bunch of things at once.
Do you use macOS? That's exactly how I feel on macOS because it is so so bad at this.
Dual 4k 27" monitors on Linux with KDE Plasma near perfect.
[dead]
I’ve had a 38” ultrawide for about a decade.
I’d say monitor position and ergonomics matter way more than screen size.
Navigating a stack of apps with alt+tab, ctrl+tab is extremely efficient. I only miss the extra space when looking at spreadsheets or comparing things in different windows.
Some laptops have a pitiful screen height, avoid those.
Ultrawide is an extra screen size that many web devs forget about. Good design can take advantage of it. But some fluid designs look terrible without constraints.
I ran a vertical setup, with a monitor above my laptop. Not a bad way to go if you want more space for auxiliary apps.
Focus is essential for productivity. Do whatever it takes to get there.
> Focus is essential for productivity. Do whatever it takes to get there.
I'm posting this because it's something I went through in my career and I hope it helps someone who is in a similar situation
I was undiagnosed ADHD until my 30s. In high school and university I was able to brute force my way through and get reasonably good grades. I had a really rocky start to my career in software. I was always getting middling performance reviews along the lines of "You're really good when you're working, but your productivity is terrible". Meanwhile my stress level was crazy high despite not exactly doing lots of overtime or anything else
Even treated, ADHD can make focus very difficult. Undiagnosed, it is devastating
Bringing it back to the words I quoted, I agree entirely. Focus is essential for productivity. Part of doing whatever it takes to get there might mean getting diagnosed and medicated
I think it's like for me moving to using Instagram in the browser instead of launching the app. Doesn't fight my addiction to doom scrolling directly, but it makes it awkward enough so that the small imposed friction reduces the urge with time.
If it works for you as it worked for me it's fine, but don't feel frustrated if you end up recreating bad habits in these kinds of setup. They can work but they don't really treat the root cause of the addiction.
My window management hack that I’m surprised I’ve not seen mentioned is that in macOS you can map each numpad key to a separate desktop. You essentially get a desktop control pad free with your keyboard, since I don’t know any SWE who uses needs their numpad.
My wish is that macOS would let you group desktops together in a way that solved both of these problems:
- Switching desktops across multiple monitors at once
- Merging and splitting desktops when going from multiple monitors to one monitor
Multiple desktops are critical to my workflow and how I mentally organize my digital workspace. I wish there was more customization or more powerful features around it.
I dunno. I wish as a start, MacOS would improve window management, so I don’t keep jumping around the various desktops all the time and get lost.
Maybe I am just too fussy, but the sliding animation that comes from switching is so disorienting and slow to me. I use multiple desktops a lot and sometimes I need to dart back and forth pretty quick and my god does that blurry transition grate on me. It really makes it feel like I am using a dusty old computer instead of a brand new four thousand dollar top of the line machine.
I have found some hacky options to do this, but they are just too janky for my taste. I would love to have Apple implement this at the OS level so I don't need to keep experimenting with Aerospace/Rectangle/Hammerspoon... Apple please allow me to disable the destop transition animations and make your OS feel snappy for once.
> since I don’t know any SWE who uses needs their numpad
Not while coding, but I use mine very frequently in the other 60% of my job.
My setup is similar: I use hyperkey (caps lock) + letters to switch between apps, that are (almost) always maximized. So I'm always focusing on one app at a time.
Aerospace helps deliver some of this functionality for you. Although the keyboard shortcuts take a little while to learn.
> it was too easy to put YouTube running
That is what is killing your focus and giving ADHD-like symptoms (supposing obviously that you don’t actually have it).
Never ever put something to play on background while you do something. That on the long run will kill your attention span and focus ability.
> On a 34" ultrawide monitor, it was too easy to put YouTube running on the left side, and whatever else on the right.
Yes, if you were doing that, almost any change to your environment that stops that will be good. I don't think you'd have to give up your monitor.
Yeah, you can't blame the monitor setup for distractions.
Up to a point, more screen real-estate is a universally good thing. Although beyond, say, two 24-27" screens or one great big one, you get into rapidly diminishing returns.
Switching to a non-ultrawide monitor might already have sufficed.
Yep, I just turn on the Leechblocker's lockdown mode which blocks all the distracting sites on my browser, I can focus on my work, without giving up any of my monitors, and all the advantages they provide me
I'm on the other side of this one. Two 27" 4k displays (at 2x scaling, so logical 1080p), always with editor on one screen, and documentation on the other.
This is true for programming (where editor = IDE and documentation = API docs for some thing or other), 3d modelling (where editor = CAD software, and documentation = reference drawings, diagrams, etc), and even gaming (where "editor" = Blue Prince, and "documentation" = a gigantic Obsidian vault with all my notes).
In all of those cases, I'm decidedly not multitasking. I have multiple applications running, but they're all contributing to the task at hand. Instead, I find that things having a fixed position in space they live in, and not needing to cmd-tab and find the right window/application are two things that help maintain focus.
At 27”, 2560x1440 withouth scaling is your better option vs UHD and x2 scaling. You need a pair of screens for true bliss.
It might be your better option, but it's not mine. I really value sharp text, and 4k@2x is vastly superior to 1440p. I really do miss my 5k iMac 27", but 60Hz doesn't cut it anymore these days, and I'm not about to drop £5k on a pair of Apple Studio Displays.
I find it useful to have multiple monitors or a large monitor that can support multiple windows comfortably useful for development, e.g. multi-pane IDE, terminals, documentation all visible simultaneously. The distraction problem is that everything else (slack, email, internet) is just a click away. I wonder if the answer is to treat the computer desktop like a real desktop that only supports having the materials open for one task at a time. So consciously switch tasks by putting the old things away and getting out the new things.
Maybe the fact that slack and outlook take a painful amount of time to open is a feature not a bug
> One day I was doing work on my laptop on a couch because hitting 30 apparently means that sleeping slightly incorrectly results in debilitating back pain.
A factor in my debilitating back pain for me (was 31 and fit; now 37; getting better) was coping with back pain by moving to unergonomic positions like the couch/bed, which led to different and thus compounding compensations, and thus more complex recovery.
Now if my back is painful in a position, I take it as a signal to move my body, not find another static position that doesn't cause pain.
That can sometimes be difficult to do, with job/family requirements though.
Sorry to derail the post, but I hope this helps someone avoid my issue.
I had the same kind of issues and moving a bit and doing little not so complex exercises helped a lot. I strongly recommend everyone. Health shall always be the first prio
I've been a laptop purist most of my life, and prefer to work outside my house / office. Only recently I got a Big Monitor™ for a mini pc. It's really messed with my head. Now when I look at my 15" laptop everything looks incredibly small. Not just that, but the scroll direction is opposite on the pc, so if I'm working side by side I find myself accidentally scrolling each one backwards, or actually typing into the wrong keyboard. Somehow I survived this long with just laptop screens and I don't think it's a mistake that my focus was preserved through that.
[Unnatural Scroll Wheels](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...)
You can configure the scroll direction on the Mac. So you can have them both go the same way.
You can also configure the scroll direction on Windows (through the registry with 10, using the settings GUI with 11) and in Linux (depending your DE).
Similarly, laptop purist for the past 25 years. I so much prefer the focus of one thing on my screen at a time, and toggling between apps without having to shift eyes on a large monitor. I also like to pick up and work from starbucks or wherever. I feel like we are in the minority overall but I do know some like us.
Is the difference that big if you just have a bigger monitor but with the same information?
I always reverse the scroll direction on trackpads.
I guess it depends the type of work you do.
To me, since I always need to have two apps side by side, a 34" screen have done wonders.
I have my main app as a regular 16/9 window, and the secondary on the side.
By putting the screen at the right distance and height, I don't have to move my head and my eyes just move a little to go through everything on the screen.
And my main window still give me more information than if I had full-screened it on my MBP 14" screen (typically, I can see my whole Jira dashboard on the 34" screen while I have to scroll on the 14").
On the other hand, having two screens (laptop + external) is terrible. Not the same resolution, having to turn the head...
------------
One thing that is bothering me reading the article: I find the whole clutter on OP's desktop quite distracting!
The cables coming out of the laptop, the things on the wall behind the laptop... That's something that would definitely kill my focus!
At the office and at home, I've put a blank wall/separator in front of me so the only thing in my vision is the screen.
Perhaps the problem isn't the BigScreen, it's the youtube video?
I normally run applications maximized on my 28" 4k, unless I need input from 2 applications at the same time, then I tile them.
Working from my work-issued 16" Macbook Pro or any other of my laptops is a pain because of the limited estate - it's hard to see patterns at a glance or get the whole context when I can only see 30 lines of text that is truncated at <=80 columns. Plus, the fact that the keyboard isn't detachable from the screen forces bad habits on the posture.
I was wondering about this for a while now.
My main home office has 5 monitors, and i still have to swipe between desktops regularly. I used to have 6, but two ultrawides stacked one above the other was a bit painful and I developed a back pain after a while.
My on the road setup typically involves a folding portable monitor (asus zenscreen duo, or something to that effect - that is 2x 1080p). Easily enough, and I don't really see a decrease in my efficiency.
But I sometimes do long distance flights and then I code/work on a single screen. I absolutely can do the same thing that I can do with my 6 screen setup with almost not noticeable effect on productivity as well. Could it be that the extra screens are just useless and an illusion of added productivity?
I find real loss on a single screen in many cases; so much so that I'll get up and move downstairs to get the extra screens.
It really depends on what kind of work I'm doing - and if I'm on the plane, I'm going to likely do work that does well single-screen; replying to emails, dicking around on HN, etc.
But in maxscreen mode (or at least two screens) then I'm "doing" something on the main screen while looking at reference material, output, chat, other things on the second.
If I am writing backend code I am mostly in a single IDE window moving tabs with code files to other screens is working but is inconvenient.
When I work on frontend I much rather have preview on second screen and most likely reference next to it.
When writing documentation or requirements I cannot imagine working on a single screen as essentially I am integrating multiple data sources into one, like I need to see how app looks now and before release, what changed and still have my working space for draft.
Switching windows to quickly look up documentation is fine but when creating requirements having time to understand what needs to be in which place how it has to evolve I need to have it right there so that my imagination doesn’t runaway.
Interesting take. I regularly switch between just the laptop and my 3 monitor setup. Sometimes I feel like I could use a 4th one because there is just so much stuff to look at when developing. When I get to my laptop I sometimes feel like I can't be really productive on it. Having to tab all the time is not in itself an issue, but I keep getting lost when I have multiple instances of an app open - e.g. IDE. Say you have 3 projects open, I feel like I keep tabbing to the wrong one all the time.
But overall, I do like the idea that you don't actually have to see everything at once. Also takes focus away I guess. I would love to see a study on this which tries to actually measure this.
I feel that tabbing to the wrong instance of an app is a problem that can be solved on the software level. It’s a nightmare on the default macOS app switcher. I use an app called Contexts as a solution and it works reasonably well. There seems to be some free and open source solutions as well.
Single-screen user here. I like virtual desktops in addition to alt-tabbing.
I’m an adamant single-screen alt-tabber. I hardly ever even have two windows open side-by-side.
I’ve always felt that I can alt-tab 2-3 times per second and that it’s faster to not move my eyes. Why look at docs next to code when I can only read one at a time anyway? It’s also embedded in my muscle memory to switch to specific apps by Apple-space typing 2-3 characters. So Firefox is “Apple-space-fi”. It’s so fast I feel slowed by having apps side-by-side.
Anything that requires me dragging windows to their special place is a non-starter. To me that feels like playing with my food. I wonder if this is just because I type very quickly?
I’m aware I’m in the minority.
Same here. Single screen, single app, at least 95% of the time. For decades.
I’d like to try a squarish monitor, but it seems to be a barren wasteland of choice: mateview, dualup, or flexscan. Meh.
There's little need for multiple monitors if you can switch virtual desktops very easily and quickly. The best method I've found is using a switcher control in the corner of the screen that can be operated by the mouse wheel.
The corners of the screen are the easiest targets to hit because they have effectively infinite size (see Fitts's Law). The mouse wheel is the best input to use because the mouse wheel is always non-destructive in standard desktop GUI software (equivalent to HTTP GET, not HTTP PUT). So long as your switcher control does not wrap around, you can set your two most important desktops as the first and last desktops, and access them with no conscious thought by jerking your arm and blindly scrolling the mouse wheel.
I use a patched version of lxqt-panel for this. The official version wraps around while switching desktops with the mouse wheel. This is IMO a bad idea because you always have the option of clicking the numbers directly, so it doesn't save any time. I have all animations disabled (essential for this system to be tolerable). I use three virtual desktops, with the the middle one reserved for less important tasks. The middle one requires conscious thought to access because I have to scroll the mouse wheel more carefully. But when accessing the main two I scroll the mouse wheel fast enough that I don't notice it.
Theoretically it would be possible to have unconscious access to 8 desktops this way (mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down for all 4 corners) but I haven't implemented this because I'm happy with two.
I'm using two external 1440p displays at work and one 32" 4k at home (with a MBP). Mostly front-end development and music production at home.
Aerospace improved my productivity a lot on that front. My main apps/windows are now bound to an alt+key combination - I can easily switch without alt+tabbing like in the dark ages.
All my windows usually take up the full screen - I simply can't stand a window that doesn't fill the entire screen - not sure if that's some kind of OCD. The cognitive load of managing apps and spaces was quite high at the beginning, but now it's just muscle memory. I do recognize that it's not for everyone, but works very well for me.
It depends what I'm working on. If it's a bunch of interdependent systems that involve a large amount of data, a giant monitor is better. If the giant monitor is being used to make visible more application surfaces (Slack, email, VS Code, etc.), it makes focus worse.
The biggest improvement I've found for my focus is to force myself to close any open tabs/windows that are not absolutely necessary roughly every two hours. I used to be one of those people with 800 tabs open in the browser and 20 application windows spread across 8 desktop spaces. Was a concentration mess. Requiring myself to "clean up" periodically has really helped.
I have a laptop to the side, and a bigger screen in front of me. And the laptop screen might as well be a picture frame: it adds no productivity gain, whatsoever. And it really confuses me. I have fond memories of my setup at work, in the result 2000's, with two big monitors on a desktop machine. I remember it working so well, and I just lost that feeling. Maybe because those were on equal footing, while the laptop screen now is the tiny little brother. Or, I'm just nostalgic and making up benefits that didn't really exist.
I used to use the laptop screen as slack/mail/calendar, and really, rather than helping in any way, it was probably more of a productivity sink: all the interrupts were conveniently more visible.
I do enjoy rocking multiple monitors, but even if I went to one, I'd still have to use a big monitor. My mind may be young but my almost 50 year old eyes aren't. (I actually run my 32 inch monitors in QHD mode)
This is what so few people realize. Size is relative viewing distance and pixel density. Small screens are designed to be viewed at decreased focal distances, making you more cross-eyed.
This was my secret weapon for years. My coworkers could never understand my focus and productivity and were always surprised when I said that it was due to working from a tiny laptop screen, and no more.
How do you view HTML/Code/JSONs in other applications?
I have an instance of Postman open on my work laptop, and the useful area of the output constitutes maybe 20% of the screen.
Do you just scroll around endlessly every 2 seconds? Or do you have amazing eyesight and use tiny fonts?
> How do you view HTML/Code/JSONs in other applications?
Not GP, but I'll be forever thankful to have been able to make my career focused on embedded software.
In my line of work there's nothing to view because there's no visual component at all. If my user(s) "see" the results of my work, then it means I've catastrophically fucked up.
I spend 90% of my time working in vim within XTerm.
The closest I get to UI/UX is a UART debugging interface.
Use more information dense editors. I work in tmux and nano.
Cmd+Tab skills! But mainly, its a matter of only ever doing one thing at a time and optimizing for that in lots of little ways.
This "rule" is especially useful now that I'm coding primarily through agents. Secret weapon number 2, while everybody else is getting burned out running ten agents at once and producing slop, while I'm now writing more (and better) code than ever.
Its funny to read these comments where people think that focus is something that they can attain.
Your secret weapon isnt the laptop. Your secret weapon is a combination of a) actually giving a fuck about what you are doing, and b) the vibe of the workspace that makes you enjoy doing what you are doing.
Focus comes from a reinforcement loop of happy hormones that come from doing what you are doing. You can't focus on things that you don't enjoy doing.
I'm not a SWE, and when I write code anymore it's just as a hobby. For work I'm in a business function and my 32" 4k monitor has been setup with 5-6 persistent windows since covid.
1. Center top: videoconferencing space. Approximately 1/3 width and 1/2 height of screen is used for Zoom/Meet/Teams. 2. Top left: chat (Slack now, previously Teams or Google Chat). Half height and 1/4 width. 3. Bottom left: Calendar (Zoom now, Google previously). Half height and 1/4 width. 4. Bottom center: primary browser window with dozens of tabs open, also used for email & calendar. 1/2 width and 1/2 height. 5. bottom right: Claude 6. Top right: working document(s). 1/3 width and 3/4 height. When I finish something, I'll close this, or occasionally move to a tab group in my primary browser.
This method of organization works pretty well and allows me to 1) get work done, 2) monitor comms, and 3) not miss meetings. If I need to focus and not allow others to disturb me, I'll just minimize the Slack & primary browser windows and make the working doc browser window(s) larger.
This is all plugged into a Macbook (14") that sits on my desk. The laptop screen contains a single browser window signed into a personal profile, and is used exclusively for non-work stuff -- mostly email.
I switched from dual monitor to single monitors with a tiling window manager. Same reason, I "flip" context far less and am less distracted. Even though there can be multiple programs on my screen at once, they are all relevant to the current tasks context so I find if I do get distracted by one, it's not like getting distracted from the whole context.
Previously I would be "alt-tabbing" and constantly losing focus. Like stepping through a doorway and forgetting why you came into that room.
Something that's helped me lately is setup alfred commands where various apps are bound to a combination key press. It's on my split keyboard and I can't recall but it's a combination of keys, but, I think ctrl+cmd+option (all on the right hand thumb cluster) and a letter where the letter is bound to an app
- z launches conductor (coding agents with worktrees)
- w launches wezterm
- f launches firefox
- c launches chrome
- d launches obsidian
- s launches slack
So I'll keep one of these full screened on the main monitor at all times. And then I've got maybe spotify open on the laptop usually which I generally ignore most of the day.
And if I need two apps I'll use rectangle to tile windows side by side
It seems like a minor thing but it's a less cognitively burdensome workflow for me as the day goes on than cmd tab would be.
Also here's the link to conductor, I'm not affiliated but really like their tool imperfections and all https://www.conductor.build/
Also also, shimmering obsidian is great for alfred users. Can search notes in my vault with spotlight https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian
I just upgraded to a 49" curved display because it lets me view everything I need _for the current task_ at one time.
One virtual desktop is Messages, Slack, and Outlook for all my comms needs.
Another is IDE & browser for development work.
Another is todo list, planner, notes, and browser for task management.
Having to constantly swap app between browser, email, IDE, slack, etc is interruptive. Being able to switch to a single-focus desktop with everything visible is much more productive for me and reduces context switching.
What's your viewing distance? I currently have a 32" at about 80cm or so. Did not like the 34" as it has actually less vertical space despite having more area technically.
Is the 49" ultra wide or more 16:9/16:10?
My viewing distance is one-arm-length (kinda close), when I raise my arm my fingertips just touch the screen. Definitely closer than my previous monitor, as you need to sit within the curved-screen radius to be in the sweet spot.
Looks like it's 32:9 aspect ratio - it's this Samsung, it was on sale last week for $800: https://a.co/d/0f884LPO
I usually use center 2/3 of 27'' screen with just a single top-level window for a similar reason. That puts it up to around 20.5'' and around 6:5 aspect ratio. I don't find having many windows shown at the same competing for my attention more productive. I don't benefit from having multiple code columns shown at once that much either and would rather switch among tabs or windows via shortcuts.
No thank you. While I'm productive when mobile on my 14” 2.8K screen, I'm more productive with the extra headroom on my single 27” 4K at the office.
Like everything else in life, it depends :
* I feel the key message here is "single vs multiple windows", not small vs big monitor. I love my 32" curved monitor. I too switched from having three monitors to having just one big monitor and staying with one maximizing window majority of time.
It's also role dependant. I spent few years as ops manager and multiple windows and situational awareness / task parallelization were important. Not saying it's a good thing but it was the name of the game.
Even without task parallelization, multiple windows are important for some roles. If I'm transforming a working excel into executive slide, it's nice to have them both up. If you are good at taking notes, having teams meeting and one note up is a life saver and super power. Etc
But yes - I think core message is "do not assume that prevalent wisdom or what others do, works for your task, job, and personality". As another example, I think dark mode is cool, all my cool friends use it, and it does not work for me on majority of applications. And that's ok... Not everybody is cool like that :-)
An aside: I am generally good at keeping notes while in a meeting, and I have tried shared notes in One Note, but as soon as someone else edits something in the same spot, it creates a forked history requiring manual reconciliation: does this work for you?
I've switched to Word akin to how I used to do it with Google Docs as that works much better.
Perhaps it's given away by "One" in the name (one simultaneous editor)? Or am I holding it wrong?
I use onenote as a personal note taking system.
For shared artifacts we use word, excel or PowerPoint in corporate onedrive and it works shockingly well, with minor but important caveats - you can't usually edit the same exact box at the same time, and it can get confused with offline changes by multiple people. But online changes by multiple simultaneous people seems to work really well. I especially enjoy when one person is presenting slides, an executive makes a suggestion, and another team member makes the change real time on the same deck and it shows up in presentation.
We are just starting to experiment with some shared onenote notebooks, it seems to have a bit more learning curve and needs more discipline and structure than the rest of ms office.
one thing I've noticed with the "single ultra wide monitor" vs multiple smaller ones is that if I maximize something on the ultra wide the "important" part is often off to the left, not centered.
I actually redesigned my desk a bit so my ultra wide's left side is directly in front of me to compensate for this, which is a bit weird, but ... it's working so far.
Oooooh, 30. Getting up there, old man! Wait till you hit your 40s and your vision starts going... you're gonna want a big-ass monitor then!
Author here, I've actually worn glasses since I was 8. :)
That's why I highlighted GNOME getting usable fractional scaling out of the box, it makes all the difference. Previously I relied on the large text accessibility feature, but toggling it on/off depending on what monitor I used was a pain.
Just get reading glasses. You'll need them anyway.
I'm actually nearsighted enough that I don't need readers, at least not yet. But my ability to accommodate has diminished, and as far away as I sit from the screen the myopia starts to kick in and even with corrective lenses it becomes difficult to resolve small text because my eyes can no longer make fine focus adjustments. So yes please, big-ass screen, big-ass fonts.
I have ADHD. I use a single 24 inch monitor. It is easier for me to have every window maximised. I'm seemingly the only person in the company that does this. Alt+tab is my friend
When I was in IT I had a second monitor, but I only ever put terminals and rdp screens for remote computers on it. This screen my machine, other screen other machine.
I gave up my monitor pre-covid, a few years earlier than that actually, and have not looked back.
The only thing that does make me wonder at times is that my video in a zoom'ish app looks different than other people's video in some manner, but all that means is that maybe I need 1 backup and mirrored display for video calls, but maybe I can live with it.
Went the opposite direction for a while, two monitors, then came back to one. The context switching between screens was costing more than the extra screen real estate was giving. Single monitor forces you to be more deliberate about what deserves your attention right now.
Sometimes things are so obvious to me I don't even think they'd be worthy of a discussion. But this is one of my blind spots, as I've come to realize over many years.
For development, I've always been happy with a 13" screen and nothing else. Not only that, but having all apps in full screen. It brings so much clarity to my mind. Exceptions (because f*ck dogma, right?) have been when I was in charge of monitoring some long-running process, in which case a secondary screen in vertical layout was very useful. Another one was for music making with Ableton Live: 2 screens was much more practical, independently of each individual screen size.
Just because of the setups I've just described, I've been looked at weird, or asked way too much questions. go figure.
For me anything bigger then 27' is just too big. I also stopped working with two monitors.
Main thing that was contributing to that is Cosmic desktop environment is has amazing defaults and adaptive scaling and if I need two displays just put window in second workspace.
Same here.
For years, I resisted even using an external monitor, preferring to work on my laptop's monitor instead. I finally switched to using a monitor when poor posture started getting uncomfortable.
I almost always have just one window on the screen, maximized. I'm also using virtual desktops to switch between the browser/app and the IDE. This kind of setup really helps me with the focus, but at the same time it's not too annoying.
I used to just use the macOS virtual desktops, but with the Apple Silicon transition, they also added annoyingly slow animation for desktop switching. That can not be turned off (seriously, wtf, Apple?). I jumped to FlashSpace the second I found about it.
I prefer big, high-resolution monitors at appropriate distance (I am at 4k 43" at roughly 36"/90cm viewing distance in my home office and 32" at 28"/70cm at work) to be able to put all task-related content on the same screen.
I need to do cross referencing quite a bit, and even with quick iterations in development, I like having documentation and output (terminal, browser...) side by side with Emacs as my IDE (I don't use Emacs' built-in window management as much, but it'd be the same thing).
Using large 16:9 screens ensures I keep enough vertical space compared to ultra-wides, and high res is crucial for smooth text (scaled properly).
I'm super productive on a 28" with yt constantly open slightly hidden behind the terminal window. EDM, chess videos, speedrun videos, having them in the background actually reduces boredom and lets me achieve more. Laptop is on the side with slack in case there is an alert or an important message.
That said, shout out to the well being app that comes with the latest gnome version! I allow it to force me to get up and walk around for five minutes at awkward times. I do light exercises like push ups and australian pull ups or get coffee while I wait. Being forced off the computer while I'm trying to focus actually makes the day more interesting.
Read this on my third screen while waiting for 4 Claude sessions to finish.
Ah, the defocuser 3000.
I can't stay "in the zone" while waiting for Claude. On the other hand whenever I'm blocked on something, I just ask it and get my answer way earlier than I would if I used a search engine.
It's quite the dilemma.
I was actually wondering about this a few months ago; if big monitors work against focus. There is something zen about having a limited amount of screen real estate & focusing on 1 thing at a time.
I have always avoided multiple monitor setups for this reason, however, I don't think the size of my monitor affects things as much as my usage of it.
Have you tried using a big monitor but just keeping windows as full-screen? I find this to be much less distracting. And of course, phone face down and notifications turned off.
Not my app, but I'll plug Dayflow here (YC backed). It's really great for measuring what you're working on, and they have local only mode for full privacy.
There is something powerful about environment and what it does to our minds. For the author, giving up the monitor is totally valid and may work for many people. I can often convince myself to chance a habit by adding a simple extra physical step. This is harder on a computer. It takes discipline to not just end up with dozens of windows and even more browser tabs in some roles. I just aggressively close windows when starting a new task or thinking. Most likely you don't need whatever you are closing :)
Is the poster sure or have they checked that the gains and perceived higher level of focus are not just because of the Change? Rather than the actual change? Maybe in a few months a bigger monitor will suddenly work better not because its bigger but because its a change?
Personally i love a big monitor, i use 32” screens (but only 1 at a time) on my Mac, pc and gaming pc. But in reality i do most ‘real work’ on my 16” mbp. And i drop the res to make everything bigger snd nice to read on the laptop.
I've tried every set up that I have the privilage of having:
- 11in Macbook Air
- 16in Macbook Pro
- 1 X 27in monitor mounted with MB Pro in clamshell mode
- Linux Mint desktop on old Dell Inspiron with 4gb of RAM
and after using all of these to try and increase my productivity, I'm still an unfocused and possibly ADD riddled human. I'm not cut from the same cloth as my other productive peers who do not watch much YouTube and can type away at a black `vim` terminal on one half of their screen with software documentation on the other half of the screen.
>I'm not cut from the same cloth as my other productive peers who do not watch much YouTube and can type away at a black `vim` terminal on one half of their screen with software documentation on the other half of the screen.
What stops you? Have you tried ripping the bandaid off, putting documentation on one screen and vim on the other? Putting your cellphone in a drawer across the room? Pulling the plug on your router if need be?
Better to proclaim on the internet that you are special and ADD than just doing the work. I mean, who even are you if you dont have an ‘ism of some sort these days? (Almost always self diagnosed)
The MacOS window manager is so bad that I've resorted to three monitors plus the built in screen. Two monitors have fullscreen terminal emulators and the last has the browser. The built-in screen handles all the distracting stuff whenever I can be bothered to look down at it.
With Xmonad I had 10 spaces on a single laptop screen (actually however many I wanted) with the flick of a button. And yes, I know about hacks like aerospace and the others that require disabling system integrity
If you were using a maximised app per workspace, I recommend setting up Hammerspoon for quick app switching. I have hyper + J for terminal, hyper + K for browser and so on. No space switching, but since each app occupies the full screen, it doesn't matter.
I went the opposite direction. I'm running a 45" LG UltraGear curved ultrawide OLED at 3440x1440. At first I thought the real estate would make me more productive. What actually happened is I have apps spread across the whole thing and spend more time rearranging windows than working. The article makes a fair point — a smaller screen forces you to commit to one thing at a time. I'm not ready to give mine up, but I can't argue with the logic."
> One day I was doing work on my laptop on a couch because hitting 30 apparently means that sleeping slightly incorrectly results in debilitating back pain.
You working out? PT?
I went from triple 1440p to just two, but I am going to go back. I guess it al depends on the type of work you do. I know managers that just use their phone.
I used to have 3 4K monitors. At some point this has become highly irritating messy. Now all my desktop PCs have single 32" 4K monitor and no scaling. This is "small" enough to keep my focus and yet large enough to arrange windows in a manner I like. Main being development IDE vertically on the right and the UI I debug / test vertically on the left be it browser or pure desktop app.
For a long time at my previous job, I had an empty desk that I would deploy my laptop onto every morning, then pack and leave the desk empty again when I left. People jokingly asked whether I had been fired when they saw the empty desk. A regular 15" screen and no clutter in my field of view greatly improved my concentration.
> too easy to put YouTube running on the left side, and whatever else on the right.
After reading the first sentences, I knew this was going to come up. I have an ultrawide screen but never watch videos next to my work. It just doesn’t work. When I’m working, I want to be productive. Somehow it’s also really bad for the brain to put things side by side as anyone I know who does this has poor focus
100% in agreement. Trying to get rid of my 32" 4K. Too much head panning and scanning. I want to comfortably see the entire screen without effort at less than 12 inches away. Creatives likely get some benefit with large displays, but for people who read, code, do productive stuff, it's too much screen, too much pixels.
27" @ WQHD res seems just about right. 4K if you absolutely must.
> I want to comfortably see the entire screen without effort at less than 12 inches away.
I wouldn’t use a display from this close. It’s better for my eyes to have a larger display a little further away. I’m closer to 30” with a 32” and another desk with a 38”
> but for people who read, code, do productive stuff, it's too much screen, too much pixels.
I do all of those things and find the opposite. So it would seem it’s more down to individual preference.
> WQHD res seems just about right.
I would dislike this. Especially for text and even more at closer distances.
Working without 3 monitors or maybe a good tiled ultrawide feels just like digging a hole with a spoon. But I'm the type of developer that needs videos or music on the side that the work is not just boring enough to stop it. Has nothing todo with the work itself that I do. When it gets difficult I can press the pause button.
I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.
Set the default window width to 1/4 or 1/3 of the screen width (depending on the screen size) and it's easy to keep just the right context visible.
Niri is so good. The spatialized layout really keeps me aware of where I need to go.
I do wish it had virtual outputs though. Such that we can either combine screens to form a big monitor, or subdivide a screen to make multiple outputs. I have been doing some coding on a 42" OLED tv, and I really want both a side tray and an overhead output. There's stilch which does this; I wonder if River is capable enough to do something similar. https://github.com/wegel/stilch
I've used a cheap 50" TV as monitor for almost a decade now and I can't complain. Sight is 20/20 at 60yo, no eye strain, no headaches, nothing. I only use it for coding (sublime) and browsing (brave), so I don't care about resolution/retina/pixels/colors/curvature/etc.
It all depends. I couldn’t work on a large screen, but having two is good, so I can have the code on one and the notes / web research/ AI discussions on the second. Constantly alt-tabbing means constant focus changes, I can’t see how that can improve focus, but if it works for the poster, great.
Hmmm, I have been thinking about this too. 10 years ago I was more productive when all I had was a bottom of the barrel 21 inch Benq monitor instead of the 3 big monitors I use now. Maybe I was younger. Or maybe I should just switch back to my old screen for a few days, and see what happens...
> On a 34" ultrawide monitor, it was too easy to put YouTube running on the left side
This has zero to do with an ultra-wide monitor and all to do with a lack of self-discipline.
I bought one of the first 38" ultra-wide monitor that came out from LG and, ten years later, I'm still rocking on it every day.
You know what? My main computer doesn't even have sound. You read that correctly. No sound. So no Youtube vids. No games. Not that I'd be tempted: but because I've got actually zero need for sound on that machine.
And I'm no luddite: I've got two servers at home, more in datacenters, countless Pi's, NUCs, and laptops. But on my work machine: it is no sound and a 38" ultra-wide.
If you need to use a monitor the size of a stamp to make sure you can't run youtube vids at the same time you're working, the issue is you, not the monitor.
Thanks for this. I enjoyed this more "informal" type of article :) I'm sort of the opposite. I've been using my small laptop screen for ages and want to try a bigger monitor to see how it feels.
I became complete garbage at video games the moment I bought a 27 inch monitor.
I also can't ever focus on doing tasks like programming and such since I got my big monitor.
Although I definitely can't give up my 3 27 inch monitors...
My productivity skyrocketed when I reduced my monitor count from 3 to 1.
I tried the big chonkers, but the humble 27" 1440p is unbeatable for me. I'm not being paid enough money to worry about that many pixels.
I recently got rid of my 27in vertical monitor that I had been using for years. I found I was getting really stressed lately and feeling closed in at my desk. Getting rid of it has improved my mental health at work, no idea why it suddenly became an issue the last year as I used to have 3 when I was a twenty something.
Horses for courses.
I use one 24 inch monitor with my laptops, and keep all the interruptions like Messages/Signal and Mail on the smaller screen. Nothing else generates notifications.
It's a matter of discipline,that's all.
Went from ultrawide back to my 27 inch monitor and definitely feel more focused. Having everything open "just in case" was killing my output. Nothing alt+tab can't fix.
I think a single 27” 4K is a sweet spot. I currently have a 32” 4K and I’m considering switching back.
Agreed, pixel density at that size in 4k is a treat.
[dead]
Being able to de-focus is actually quite useful.
Imagine sitting through those lengthy team calls and having to concentrate on BS for 1-2 hours.
Nah, I’d rather focus on getting things done in the meantime.
I love alt+tab way too much to ever go back to multi screen.
A different angle: multiple screens can cause neck problems if you’re tilting your head in a weird direction for too long
Same here, I've found a single (not too big) monitor to be best for ergonomics.
Still keep a second monitor around, but it's exclusively for screen sharing. Speaking of, having a dedicated monitor for sharing is really nice:
- It can have a standard resolution and aspect ratio (1080p) which is perfect for sharing
- It is a clean slate. I only share stuff I consciously move to that monitor. No need to clear my screen or burden my colleagues with unrelated windows in our call.
- Yes app sharing exists, but screen sharing is just more reliable and works better for sharing multiple things sequentially/simultaneously.
I feel the same way. In general, I prefer working on a couch with my laptop. My eyes aren't great and I end up ruining my posture at a desk, invariably.
Maybe this is why I feel like unplugging the laptop from monitor, to use it on the bed.
Going to try not plugging the monitor at all, it might save my sleep.
I went the other direction. I bought a Dell 40" for productivity and I feel like the increased real estate only clutters and distracts.
That is very big. You would end up getting neck pain as you have to physically move your head to look at extremities of the screen.
I use a 32" monitor and I find that I use only the center of the screen. I would downsize if not for vertical real estate.
I've had it two years, no neck pain. I don't have to move my head to look around.
How far away from it do you sit? I don't get neck pain, but I do have to move my head even on a 32", thinking of switching back to a 27" for that reason (plus better pixel density.)
My eyes are 30" to 36" away from the monitor. The original reason for getting a big monitor was the idea that looking at something that far relaxes the ciliary muscles in the eye. I don't have to turn my neck at this distance and I don't get any headaches even if I stare at it for 10+ hours/day though my original point still stands which is I end up using only the center of the monitor.
Stop ignoring obesity.
Pull up the BMI chart, do the calculation. Get to normal at 1kg drop a week. Done. It works. Back pain solved.
Solid advise but I think that it is less known that tight glutes can cause lower back pain too even when your BMI is normal. Basically sitting too much and not stretching enough is a cause for the pelvic misalignment.
ALT-TAB is much faster than moving my head
went from 27" Mint to 13" Mac Book Neo. I'm extreme astonished how this has changed my workflow. Smaller screen realy works better for me. The change from Mint to MacOS was not hard and most programs are the same.
The answer to half the problems in this thread is a tiling window manager
I will never give up my 5k2k LG 32 inch lcd. Single is best I do agree.
Is he blaming displays for his lack of concentration discipline?
this looks like a recipe for eye strain and poor posture. waiting for the follow up post in a month.
reading the title I thought it's a relationship advice...
Nope. I have 3 screens in an H layout, and I am deliriously happy with them;
The middle screen is BenQ RD280U; the 3:2 ratio is amazing after so many widescreen ones. Never going back to coding on a widescreen.
One Dell UQ2720Q on each side, vertically.
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]