8 ms·

Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

184 points by Fudgel 6mo ago

brador 6mo ago
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.
- _pdp_ 6mo ago
  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.
Leomuck 6mo ago
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.
- _thisdot 6mo ago
  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.
- riidom 6mo ago
  Single-screen user here. I like virtual desktops in addition to alt-tabbing.
  - justonceokay 6mo ago
    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.
    - yzydserd 6mo ago
      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.
bdcravens 6mo ago
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)
- seemaze 6mo ago
  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.
Surac 6mo ago
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.
nate8bit 6mo ago
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.
bitexploder 6mo ago
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 :)
Xcelerate 6mo ago
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.
aenis 6mo ago
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?
- bombcar 6mo ago
  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.
  - ozim 6mo ago
    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.
convexly 6mo ago
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.
- antonvs 6mo ago
  I think a single 27” 4K is a sweet spot. I currently have a 32” 4K and I’m considering switching back.
  - convexly 6mo ago
    Agreed, pixel density at that size in 4k is a treat.
  - smohare 6mo ago
    [dead]
plqbfbv 6mo ago
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.
kshacker 6mo ago
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.
daniel-ash 6mo ago
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
- eemil 6mo ago
  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.
0xfaded 6mo ago
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
- maleldil 6mo ago
  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.
edoloughlin 6mo ago
I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/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.
- jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
  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 https://github.com/wegel/stilch
chrisra 6mo ago
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.
oojuliuso 6mo ago
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.
- theshackleford 6mo ago
  > 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.
bix6 6mo ago
> 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?
farfatched 6mo ago
> 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.
- birole 6mo ago
  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
huijzer 6mo ago
> 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
nurettin 6mo ago
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.
not_your_vase 6mo ago
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...
iammrpayments 6mo ago
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.
jaffa2 6mo ago
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.
tariky 6mo ago
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.
timeonecom 6mo ago
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.
cyberax 6mo ago
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.
SanjayMehta 6mo ago
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.
wiether 6mo ago
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.
necovek 6mo ago
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).
JSR_FDED 6mo ago
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.
- cookiengineer 6mo ago
  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.*
  - Faaak 6mo ago
    In sway + Wayland, these UI scaling bugs are fixed
    - cookiengineer 6mo ago
      ... while other bugs are introduced :-/ Can't switch because of old hardware and vulkan/mesa legacy reasons.
    - ahartmetz 6mo ago
      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.
hashmal 6mo ago
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.
microbuilderco 6mo ago
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densh 6mo ago
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.
deleted 6mo ago
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bob1029 6mo ago
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.
- sassymuffinz 6mo ago
  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.
m-a-r-c-e-l 6mo ago
ALT-TAB is much faster than moving my head
pdpi 6mo ago
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.
- smallstepforman 6mo ago
  At 27”, 2560x1440 withouth scaling is your better option vs UHD and x2 scaling. You need a pair of screens for true bliss.
  - pdpi 6mo ago
    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.
ehnto 6mo ago
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.
petters 6mo ago
> 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.
- t_mahmood 6mo ago
  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
- layer8 6mo ago
  Switching to a non-ultrawide monitor might already have sufficed.
- bluescrn 6mo ago
  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.
itmitica 6mo ago
Is he blaming displays for his lack of concentration discipline?
OfirMarom 6mo ago
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.
gchamonlive 6mo ago
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.
sourcegrift 6mo ago
The answer to half the problems in this thread is a tiling window manager
krater23 6mo ago
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.
mt18 6mo ago
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strangelove026 6mo ago
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/ 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 https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian
LeoDaVibeci 6mo ago
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.
dev1ycan 6mo ago
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...
tuzemec 6mo ago
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.
eitally 6mo ago
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.
TacticalCoder 6mo ago
> 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.
siliconpotato 6mo ago
this looks like a recipe for eye strain and poor posture. waiting for the follow up post in a month.
wateralien 6mo ago
Read this on my third screen while waiting for 4 Claude sessions to finish.
- Tade0 6mo ago
  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.
FrojoS 6mo ago
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/S0167876021001835 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...
- DiscourseFan 6mo ago
  Yeah I do find it easier and less tiresome to read on my phone.
- tom_ 6mo ago
  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.)
- miguno 6mo ago
  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?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=368ebba566302aafde653415fd3a857b51721bcf https://preview.redd.it/yekindar-xd-v0-zsm7fzd5jd5e1.jpeg?wi... "I need you to be focused!"
  - rendaw 6mo ago
    Moving closer to the screen would increase the FOV.
CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
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.
mrob 6mo ago
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.
SteveStavros 6mo ago
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.
jebarker 6mo ago
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
motoboi 6mo ago
> 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.
pliesfan97 6mo ago
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.
- rubslopes 6mo ago
  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.
- ant6n 6mo ago
  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.
- xbryanx 6mo ago
  Aerospace helps deliver some of this functionality for you. Although the keyboard shortcuts take a little while to learn.
- foobarchu 6mo ago
  > 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.
- ulcer 6mo ago
  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.
sverhagen 6mo ago
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.
- rkomorn 6mo ago
  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.
jimnotgym 6mo ago
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.
yunnpp 6mo ago
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.
noduerme 6mo ago
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.
- amunozo 6mo ago
  Is the difference that big if you just have a bigger monitor but with the same information?
- atsaloli 6mo ago
  You can configure the scroll direction on the Mac. So you can have them both go the same way.
  - wzdd 6mo ago
    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).
- plasma_beam 6mo ago
  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.
- SoftTalker 6mo ago
  I always reverse the scroll direction on trackpads.
- drBonkers 6mo ago
  [Unnatural Scroll Wheels](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels&ved=2ahUKEwjeuZ6xitKTAxX0DDQIHSwjGAYQFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0zJim62O_gDpL2dpb5e0wE https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...)
NikolaNovak 6mo ago
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 :-)
- bombcar 6mo ago
  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.
- necovek 6mo ago
  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?
  - NikolaNovak 6mo ago
    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.
makeitrain 6mo ago
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.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  > 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
2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
I went the other direction. I bought a Dell 40" for productivity and I feel like the increased real estate only clutters and distracts.
- kanbankaren 6mo ago
  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.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
    I've had it two years, no neck pain. I don't have to move my head to look around.
    - antonvs 6mo ago
      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.)
      - kanbankaren 6mo ago
        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.
gambutin 6mo ago
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.
jasonmp85 6mo ago
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bitwize 6mo ago
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!
- hddherman 6mo ago
  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.
- deleted 6mo ago
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- SoftTalker 6mo ago
  Just get reading glasses. You'll need them anyway.
  - bitwize 6mo ago
    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.
FpUser 6mo ago
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.
psyclobe 6mo ago
I will never give up my 5k2k LG 32 inch lcd. Single is best I do agree.
jasonpeacock 6mo ago
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.
- NikolaNovak 6mo ago
  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?
  - jasonpeacock 6mo ago
    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 https://a.co/d/0f884LPO
PeterStuer 6mo ago
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.
prhn 6mo ago
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.
- smohare 6mo ago
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- EnPissant 6mo ago
  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.
- rkomorn 6mo ago
  > 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?
  - lelanthran 6mo ago
    > 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.
binkHN 6mo ago
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.
deep_noz 6mo ago
reading the title I thought it's a relationship advice...
sibeliuss 6mo ago
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.
- ActorNightly 6mo ago
  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.
- antisthenes 6mo ago
  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?
  - sibeliuss 6mo ago
    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.
  - asdff 6mo ago
    Use more information dense editors. I work in tmux and nano.
  - acuozzo 6mo ago
    > 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.
Kuyawa 6mo ago
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.
UnhappyMeaning 6mo ago
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.
- asdff 6mo ago
  >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?
- jaffa2 6mo ago
  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)
ronb1964 6mo ago
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."
smusamashah 5mo ago
Thank you very much for sharing this article. I have been having issues with my second monitor which is connected to my my laptop making it 3 screens. It was very annoying having to replug it to dock everytime it decided to turn off. I have also been feeling less productive for quite a while now. After reading this, I have let the second one stay off and then unplugged and I can already notice the difference a lot. I didn't switch between apps much or procrastinated as much. It's only been a day or two and I have yet to see how I fare in long term. For now, I am happy.

184 points by Fudgel 6mo ago

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.

_pdp_ 6mo ago
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.

Leomuck 6mo ago

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.

_thisdot 6mo ago
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.
riidom 6mo ago
Single-screen user here. I like virtual desktops in addition to alt-tabbing.
- justonceokay 6mo ago
  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.
  - yzydserd 6mo ago
    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.

bdcravens 6mo ago

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)

seemaze 6mo ago
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.

Surac 6mo ago

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.

nate8bit 6mo ago

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.

bitexploder 6mo ago

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 :)

Xcelerate 6mo ago

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.

aenis 6mo ago

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?

bombcar 6mo ago
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.
- ozim 6mo ago
  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.

convexly 6mo ago

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.

antonvs 6mo ago
I think a single 27” 4K is a sweet spot. I currently have a 32” 4K and I’m considering switching back.
- convexly 6mo ago
  Agreed, pixel density at that size in 4k is a treat.
- smohare 6mo ago
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plqbfbv 6mo ago

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.

kshacker 6mo ago

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.

daniel-ash 6mo ago

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

eemil 6mo ago
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.

0xfaded 6mo ago

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

maleldil 6mo ago
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.

edoloughlin 6mo ago

I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/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.

jauntywundrkind 6mo ago
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 https://github.com/wegel/stilch

chrisra 6mo ago

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.

oojuliuso 6mo ago

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.

theshackleford 6mo ago
> 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.

bix6 6mo ago

> 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?

farfatched 6mo ago

> 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.

birole 6mo ago
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

huijzer 6mo ago

> 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

nurettin 6mo ago

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.

not_your_vase 6mo ago

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...

iammrpayments 6mo ago

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.

jaffa2 6mo ago

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.

tariky 6mo ago

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.

timeonecom 6mo ago

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.

cyberax 6mo ago

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.

SanjayMehta 6mo ago

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.

wiether 6mo ago

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.

necovek 6mo ago

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).

JSR_FDED 6mo ago

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.

cookiengineer 6mo ago
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.*
- Faaak 6mo ago
  In sway + Wayland, these UI scaling bugs are fixed
  - cookiengineer 6mo ago
    ... while other bugs are introduced :-/ Can't switch because of old hardware and vulkan/mesa legacy reasons.
  - ahartmetz 6mo ago
    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.

hashmal 6mo ago

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.

microbuilderco 6mo ago

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densh 6mo ago

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.

deleted 6mo ago

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bob1029 6mo ago

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.

sassymuffinz 6mo ago
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.

m-a-r-c-e-l 6mo ago

ALT-TAB is much faster than moving my head

pdpi 6mo ago

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.

smallstepforman 6mo ago
At 27”, 2560x1440 withouth scaling is your better option vs UHD and x2 scaling. You need a pair of screens for true bliss.
- pdpi 6mo ago
  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.

ehnto 6mo ago

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.

petters 6mo ago

> 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.

t_mahmood 6mo ago
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
layer8 6mo ago
Switching to a non-ultrawide monitor might already have sufficed.
bluescrn 6mo ago
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.

itmitica 6mo ago

Is he blaming displays for his lack of concentration discipline?

OfirMarom 6mo ago

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.

gchamonlive 6mo ago

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.

sourcegrift 6mo ago

The answer to half the problems in this thread is a tiling window manager

krater23 6mo ago

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.

mt18 6mo ago

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strangelove026 6mo ago

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/ 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 https://github.com/chrisgrieser/shimmering-obsidian

LeoDaVibeci 6mo ago

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.

dev1ycan 6mo ago

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...

tuzemec 6mo ago

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.

eitally 6mo ago

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.

TacticalCoder 6mo ago

> 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.

siliconpotato 6mo ago

this looks like a recipe for eye strain and poor posture. waiting for the follow up post in a month.

wateralien 6mo ago

Read this on my third screen while waiting for 4 Claude sessions to finish.

Tade0 6mo ago
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.

FrojoS 6mo ago

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/S0167876021001835 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01678...

DiscourseFan 6mo ago
Yeah I do find it easier and less tiresome to read on my phone.
tom_ 6mo ago
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.)
miguno 6mo ago
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?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=368ebba566302aafde653415fd3a857b51721bcf https://preview.redd.it/yekindar-xd-v0-zsm7fzd5jd5e1.jpeg?wi... "I need you to be focused!"
- rendaw 6mo ago
  Moving closer to the screen would increase the FOV.

CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago

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.

mrob 6mo ago

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.

SteveStavros 6mo ago

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.

jebarker 6mo ago

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

motoboi 6mo ago

> 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.

pliesfan97 6mo ago

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.

rubslopes 6mo ago
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.
ant6n 6mo ago
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.
xbryanx 6mo ago
Aerospace helps deliver some of this functionality for you. Although the keyboard shortcuts take a little while to learn.
foobarchu 6mo ago
> 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.
ulcer 6mo ago
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.

sverhagen 6mo ago

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.

rkomorn 6mo ago
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.

jimnotgym 6mo ago

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.

yunnpp 6mo ago

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.

noduerme 6mo ago

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.

amunozo 6mo ago
Is the difference that big if you just have a bigger monitor but with the same information?
atsaloli 6mo ago
You can configure the scroll direction on the Mac. So you can have them both go the same way.
- wzdd 6mo ago
  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).
plasma_beam 6mo ago
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.
SoftTalker 6mo ago
I always reverse the scroll direction on trackpads.
drBonkers 6mo ago
[Unnatural Scroll Wheels](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels&ved=2ahUKEwjeuZ6xitKTAxX0DDQIHSwjGAYQFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0zJim62O_gDpL2dpb5e0wE https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...)

NikolaNovak 6mo ago

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 :-)

bombcar 6mo ago
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.
necovek 6mo ago
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?
- NikolaNovak 6mo ago
  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.

makeitrain 6mo ago

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.

bluefirebrand 6mo ago
> 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

2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago

I went the other direction. I bought a Dell 40" for productivity and I feel like the increased real estate only clutters and distracts.

kanbankaren 6mo ago
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.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
  I've had it two years, no neck pain. I don't have to move my head to look around.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    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.)
    - kanbankaren 6mo ago
      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.

gambutin 6mo ago

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.

jasonmp85 6mo ago

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bitwize 6mo ago

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!

hddherman 6mo ago
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.
deleted 6mo ago
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SoftTalker 6mo ago
Just get reading glasses. You'll need them anyway.
- bitwize 6mo ago
  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.

FpUser 6mo ago

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.

psyclobe 6mo ago

I will never give up my 5k2k LG 32 inch lcd. Single is best I do agree.

jasonpeacock 6mo ago

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.

NikolaNovak 6mo ago
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?
- jasonpeacock 6mo ago
  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 https://a.co/d/0f884LPO

PeterStuer 6mo ago

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.

prhn 6mo ago

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.

smohare 6mo ago
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EnPissant 6mo ago
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.
rkomorn 6mo ago
> 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?
- lelanthran 6mo ago
  > 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.

binkHN 6mo ago

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.

deep_noz 6mo ago

reading the title I thought it's a relationship advice...

sibeliuss 6mo ago

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.

ActorNightly 6mo ago
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.
antisthenes 6mo ago
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?
- sibeliuss 6mo ago
  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.
- asdff 6mo ago
  Use more information dense editors. I work in tmux and nano.
- acuozzo 6mo ago
  > 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.

Kuyawa 6mo ago

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.

UnhappyMeaning 6mo ago

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.

asdff 6mo ago
>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?
jaffa2 6mo ago
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)

ronb1964 6mo ago

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."

smusamashah 5mo ago

Thank you very much for sharing this article. I have been having issues with my second monitor which is connected to my my laptop making it 3 screens. It was very annoying having to replug it to dock everytime it decided to turn off. I have also been feeling less productive for quite a while now. After reading this, I have let the second one stay off and then unplugged and I can already notice the difference a lot. I didn't switch between apps much or procrastinated as much. It's only been a day or two and I have yet to see how I fare in long term. For now, I am happy.