Why I turned my screen 90° and you should too

How a simple shift made a big difference in my productivity.

— for Logan —

When I first started working remotely, I spent months tinkering with my set-up, trying to get things just right. The desk. The mounted monitor arms. The webcam. I couldn’t help it. As a professional whose career revolves around making people productive, I think about this stuff a lot.

I’m not alone either. For instance, after I bought a new mouse, I sent a photo of it to my friend and fellow workplace technology fanatic, Logan Brown, the same way a foodie feels compelled to snap and send a picture of a plate of food.

One thing I was curious about was turning your screen to portrait mode. I had seen developers do it because they scroll through so many lines of code, and since they seem to know what’s up about these things in general, I figured I’d try out for myself.

At first, I hated it

UX designers optimize for the standard landscape layout, so turning my monitor on its side had immediate obstacles. For one, you have to tell your computer to rotate your monitor. After that, you have to configure your screen snapping tool to do the same. By the way, if you don’t have one of these, I recommend Magnet, which can divide your screen into thirds and send windows to their spaces with a configurable hotkey.

Countless other annoyances pop-up when you make the conversion to vertical. Windows don’t always resize properly and cut-off content. Many applications use horizontal timelines, so your workspace is limited. It’s like I say to aspiring camera-phone videographers who forget to turn their device when filming — it’s a widescreen world.

Still I was determined to make it work, and I decided to start optimizing my space for the zoom room.

Setting up for virtual meetings

Despite my best efforts, I spend a good chunk of my days in meetings. When I do, I like that time to be productive and engaged with the discussion; I like being able to pull from and contribute to the topic at hand, and I hate missing the conversation because I’m searching for a tab or some document.