A case against dual-monitor setups

December 9, 2024

A second screen is often described as one key to increasing one’s productivity, but I’d argue they are actually many more downsides of having a second monitor depending on how you use your computer.

Who this is for and for who it is not.

Let me paint, a picture for you. Imagine, you work from home and are possibly even self-employed. Your “office” is much more than just your office. It is also your “entertainment consumption space” as well as your fancy gaming room.

Early in the morning you enter this room. You possibly haven’t even completely dressed yet. You boot up your workstation and begin your day’s work.

If you can at least partly relate with this depiction, congratulations, read on.

If you, however, are keen on seperating work spaces and living spaces and have to leave your home to attend work, read on still ( :) ), but keep in mind that you are not the main audience here.

The myth of multi-tasking

Two screens means double the work done, right? Wrong. You think, you can write your essay on one screen, while watching YouTube on another. But you can’t. Multi-Tasking, which this process is often called, doesn’t exist. Multi-Tasking really means very quickly switching between tasks. The same mechanism computers use.

For computers this process usually works out fine, as their work performance isn’t increased by focus or concentration. Saying the same holds true for humans, however, would be lying to oneself.

In actuality switching tasks costs us valuable time, where we need to again think our way into a problem, again building up our concentration. Switching tasks - like happens while “multi-tasking” - breaks our focus. Studies show that switching tasks usually costs us multiple minutes, before we again reach the same level of focus that we had before.

One might think that they get more done, when multitasking, but this percecption is an illusion, based on the circumstance that the part of your brain responsible for perceiving how much you get done is too stressed when multitasking to deliver accurate results to your conscience.

A case against dual-monitor setups

As spending more unnecessary time with a task is usually not what one wants, the case against a second screen is easily made.

They invite “multi-tasking”, a process shown to be much less effective, much more than a single screen would, as there is much more often the need to just fill all of the given screen real-estate.

This need to fill screen real-estate is also catalyst for procrastination, as more often than not, the second screen is filled by something like a youtube video, which is not only distracting, but most notably an easy fallback, when your actual task is difficult and your brain seeks for something easier.

This of course also happens with smartphones near your work space, especially, when they provocatively lie on your table, but that phones aren’t the greatest for your attention is - I think at least - well-known. The case against a second screen, however, has not been made as loudly.

Identifying the root cause

There are of course also benefits for having two monitors, but they hold true only for specific types of work. Most video editing softwares for example allow you to spread the many many tools available to you on two screens. The same goes for web development, where one probably wants to see the website and the code (and StackOverflow) simultaneously.

Thus, in the scenario described before the dual-monitor setup is not the root cause. It is really just an extension of the real problem, the missing seperation of spaces. Having a different environment for different activities would be even more beneficial. Or at least having a seperate machine, something called single-purpose-computing.