Manage Pixles, not Monitors

I wrote a couple of posts about working with 2 monitors and how to make them friendly when using full screen mode. I always thought that having two monitors increases the productivity and I am still thinking that way.

I found his article that explains that having 2 or monitors do not increases productivity, they increase distractions. According to the article the key to productivity is not the number of monitors you have instead it is the number of pixels. The optimal number of pixels, at least for the average people is around 2500x1400 with this resolution in one monitor you can achieve everything you want, you can place all the windows and applications needed to do your job perfectly. I found one bug there. Even you have the right amount of pixels managing windows in one monitor is more complicated than managing windows in two monitors. There are great window manager applications for Windows, Mac and Linux which make this work really easy.

Anyways the article also says that with resolutions greater than the optimal everything tends to be a distraction because you have more space for things that do not matter and steal your attention, which make sense.

Personally I prefer to have two monitors instead of one big monitor with my perfect resolution. Either way the goal here is to stay focus on what it is important it does not matter if you have one big monitor or 4 x 27' monitors connected together.