Increase productivity by adding another monitor to your computer.
When you’re working for yourself, you want to try to find as many ways to save time and money as possible. Some of these methods are more difficult than others and some are more expensive than others but in the long run they should all have the same goal in mind; to make you more productive and to earn you more money. It’s common sense that having the right software and hardware for the job can make anyone’s job much easier but we can go further than just the basic computer setup. It’s been shown in multiple studies that on average adding another monitor to your computer can increase productivity by 20%.
There have been many articles written on how multiple screens can increase productivity and even though they all differ on the actual percentage of increase they all agree on one thing; productivity does in fact increase. If you think about it, it makes sense because you can see more without the need to open and close multiple windows. For example if you’re writing an article you may want to have different sources open on one screen and have your writing application open on the other. Instead of switching back and forth from the source to the application (often losing your location in the article) you can simple look at the other screen while continuing to type. Having multiple monitors not only helps writers but it can help graphic designers, programmers, and even data entry positions. Designers for example may want to have their graphics application open on their main screen and have ideas and color pallets open on another.
There is no hard answer as to how much more productive you will become with another monitor (or three or four more) but you don’t know until you try. The best way to do this is try and find a monitor to borrow so you test it out before you make a rather large investment in another monitor. Borrow one from another computer in the house, a friend or “borrow” one from work for a week or so. Hook it up and give it a try, most people say that once they’ve worked with a dual-monitor setup they can’t imagine every working on a single setup again, I concur.
Things you will need.
- A second monitor, duh.
- A video card that supports multiple monitors or another graphics card to install with your current one.
- An operating system that supports multiple monitors, most modern OS’s do.
- Patience! You will need to set everything up and depending on your computer experience this can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.
Some Sources
- http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=433
- http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/18/technology/two.monitors.fsb/index.htm
- http://codebetter.com/blogs/darrell.norton/archive/2003/11/11/3432.aspx
- http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000012.html
It may increase productivity, but I find it very distracting. Guess this old dog will pass on that particular new trick :)
M