Not too long ago there was an article sent around work that talked about the increase in productivity if you use dual monitors. According to the article on Yahoo! Tech, the use of dual monitors will increase your productivity by 44%.  Digging further into the article it looks like the specific increase in productivity was found through a test conducted at the University of Utah.

In a study commissioned by the electronics company NEC, researchers at the University of Utah recently asked office workers to perform several common tasks using various monitor configurations. They found that people who used dual 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor. (Read the full New York Times Article)

More Monitors Mean More Work is Done

It wasn’t until I started working with Quicken Loans that I had personally experienced the use of dual monitors. When I first started I looked around with envy at my teammates who had the dual monitors. Low and behold all I had to do was ask, and my team leader hooked me up with dual monitors.  Boo-yah!

I will admit that the dual monitors are both a blessing and a pain. It is a blessing because when I have to do work that involves copy and pasting – it’s quicker. When I have to QA the website changes – I can open up both browsers and compare how the site looks in both browsers. If I’m digging into analytics – there is a spreadsheet open on one screen and an analytics program on another.  They help me get more done.

On the other hand though if I really need to dig in and focus – my email is always open asking me to read it.  Or a browser is open with all the crazy social nedualrking sites that I do my research on.  Oh and a big pet peeve, when I go from using the laptop to the dual monitors – the desktop is all messed up. Small aggravations compared to the benefits of dual monitors.

Should You Use Dual Monitors?

At the end of the day I give dual thumbs up to dual monitors. And I would high suggest you use dual monitors if you do any of the following tasks:

• ANY type of writing or copy editing.
• Build online advertising campaigns or paid search campaigns.
• Review websites for content, layout and/or usability.
• Programming of any sorts.
• Search engine optimization.

How about you? Do you use dual monitors? If so, what kind of tasks have you found that it helps you with?