Multiple screens is worse than one screen

I FEEL more productive with multiple monitors. But I AM more productive with only one.

Why?

Probably for the same reason that most people believe that they can effectively multi-task, and multiple monitors enable that. In other words because we didn't actually have a hypothesis, test it, and conclude based on evidence..

In reality NOBODY can multitask. It's an illusion and a myth.

We're like JavaScript's single-threaded async system. We switch tasks. We queue tasks. We do micro-switches constantly. We don't do two things at once, rather we put things on hold and do the next one, then go back to the first one.

And no, ladies aren't "better at multitasking" either, because multitasking as such doesn't exist. They might be better organized, but that's a different claim.

So what do multiple monitors actually do? They LOWER our productivity by introducing multi-tasking as a default.

Caveats, you gotta have them. If you have a live-reloading system, then having the game, or the app, on one monitor, while you program on the other, might be a good use case, vs switching constantly. But that's an exception, and it really requires discipline to not get distracted with the second monitor.