Why I Ditched the Second Monitor
What follows is purely personal—your setup might be perfect for you. But if any of this resonates, I’d be glad.
My studio is a 30-square-meter space in the heart of Łódź, Poland. For five years I’ve been building projects, recording tutorials, and designing courses with a big external monitor paired to my laptop. It felt efficient—until I noticed something odd.
I wasn’t coding so much as transcribing. I’d park my script or reference code on the second screen and spend entire sessions swivelling my head left to right thirty-plus times a minute, copying line after line. If that second screen went dark, I’d panic. My own thinking slowed.
The dependence started to feel like the way we lean on AI tools. A calculator helps with a complex equation, sure, but it doesn’t replace understanding. ChatGPT can be a spark, not a stand-in. My extra monitor had become a stand-in.
Last week I unplugged it. Now it’s just me and the laptop. Notes live on an iPad or a sheet of paper when I need them. And something shifted: I write from memory, plan in my head, and feel my brain working instead of my eyes darting. The simple act of getting stuck—sitting with a problem—feels good again.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been reminded that the hard way matters. From 2009 to 2011 I worked for a Japanese company in Algeria. One day I made a tiny mistake—an extra dot on a document. My manager, Yuki Takahashi (“Yuki” means snow in Japanese), looked at me and said:
“Amir-san, don’t take the easy way. Perfect what you can. The easy way is bad; the hard way pays off.”
Those words never left me. Shortcuts can feed you like junk food: satisfying now, costly later.
So here I am, back to a single screen. It’s slower, and that’s the point.
How about you? Do you thrive with a wall of monitors, or does less help you think more?
Thanks for reading—stay safe, and see you next time.
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Top comments (16)
Ha! I just went to two screens this week after using a single screen for about five years. My second screen is purely for keeping some dashboards open that I want to make sure I'm thinking about at the start of the day. I've been turning it off after lunch when I feel like I've 'checked in' enough.
This is such an interesting read, I've never thought of the second monitor in that way.
I think I like the second monitor as a way to monitor chat messages. But perhaps that could be a distraction at times too, taking away from us getting into deep work.
Don't know if I'm brave enough to get rid of the second screen just yet, but defiantly has me thinking of ways to improve my workspace.
Thank you, Shaquille, for your message.
Your point in the fourth line is exactly why I decided to drop my second screen.
If your current setup works well for you and the second screen feels right, that’s great. Maybe down the road you’ll find an even better way to optimize your workspace, as you mentioned. Cheers—
I use my laptop screen solely for all my Teams meetings and a second simple monitor in the office for my actual work. This setup works best for me since I usually end up having 4–5 hours of meetings every day for no real reason (I honestly hate Agile 🫠).
I've got 2 x 34 inch Alienware curved monitors, stacked on top of each other.
Since it's my home office, I can afford the luxury.
My laptop's lid is always closed, the screen is too small to be worth bothering.
If I was travelling, the yes, I could use the laptop's screen, but at home, there's no reason. Zero. Nada.
Same idea, my friend. I have two machines: a MacBook Air and a PC. With the MacBook, I do the same as you - I shut the lid because it's connected to a larger screen. For the PC, I work directly on the laptop screen. It’s the same concept: the most important thing is that we don’t juggle between two screens, twisting our necks left and right.
Less is more. Two screens is way too distracting. Laptop screen and e-ink tablet for notes is my setup. Super happy with it. Much more focused.
Spot on! That’s my setup now too. I figured my tablet works best for taking notes for my YouTube tutorials—and I’m not tempted to glance at it every few seconds like a robot. Since then, I’ve never felt more clear-minded. Cheers -
amazing article
Thank you so much, Yalda.
How fun! I was just putting the finishing touches on my ode to large screens when I happened across your defense of small screens.
For an alternative perspective, check out dev.to/leeca/confessions-of-a-big-...
I think you got it wrong - It’s not really about small screens versus big ones—it’s about using one screen instead of juggling two. That way, we avoid twisting our necks back and forth.
Fair point. I use all this real estate as a single desktop. One desktop for this project, one desktop for that project, one desktop for communication / email.
When I'm working on a project desktop, I will literally not even see my email folder for hours.
I've landed on only using a single laptop screen but for completely different reasons. I spent the year trying to optimize my digital nomad setup. I used a 15" OLED second monitor I could pack down easily and laptop and monitor stands. Used my portable setup everywhere. Work, home, coffee shops, always used my full setup. Then sometime this year I discovered PaperWM and haven't looked away from scrolling tiling window managers. And the more I've used them the more comfortable I get only using one screen and ditched the second screen entirely. I've switched from PapwerWM to Niri on Linux and I think it's probably the gold standard right now. My work computer is a MacBook Pro though and I've found the PaperWM.Spoon Hammerspoon plug-in to effective enough for everyday use. It's the first thing I've used to kill my reliance on Rectangle and Alt-Tab to bend macOS into something I can use easily.
The only "negative" I've noticed is that I'm now completely comfortable working on the couch with just my mechanical keyboard over the laptop keyboard. Partially because trackpads which I've never cared for other than for convenience are excellent with STWMs. Even faster than keyboard controls for jumping between apps sometimes.
With AI it does help me focus more using just one screen instead of my extra monitor.
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