When you’re limited to desk or table space, but would find a second screen useful, then you might want to consider using a tablet as that second screen. Whether using an iPad or an Android tablet, having a second display helps to increase productivity in several ways. You can use virtual screens to hop between virtual desktops, but it’s a lot of jumping back and forth, which can be extremely distracting. It’s been shown that using a second screen boosts productivity, but that depends on what type and how you use it.
Let’s now explore how to improve your productivity by using a second screen and what ways you can use it to stay on top of everything better.
Rapid Fire Email
When you don’t want to keep having to stop to switch tabs in your browser to deal with your email or to open a separate email package like Outlook or Thunderbird to check what’s come in, you’re in a bit of a bind. Your boss, suppliers, or customers expect to get a reasonably quick response rate, but this keeps interrupting your workflow; the more interruptions, the less productive you are.
What we’d suggest is to use a tablet screen to load up your email so it’s just sitting to your left or right of your keyboard. Slightly out of sight, still easy to look across to visually check it while you’re touch typing away on your laptop or desktop PC uninterrupted. There’s no need to stop what you’re doing on your PC to check your email; you can just glance over and deal with anyone truly important to still appear responsive to contacts.
Share Project Spreadsheet with Team Members
Keeping the Google Sheets app open to see what changes are made to a shared project spreadsheet is a good way to manage projects. New tasks can be added to the sheet and assigned to individual staff members (they can assign themselves, where appropriate). All changes are viewed live as they happen and are saved automatically with a list of recent changes accessible in the ‘history’ section.
The Google Sheets app is available through Android and Google Chrome’s extensions, plus it can be accessed on the Mac too. Alternatively, Microsoft Excel has an online web version which is cross-compatible. Make sure that you get a good tablet for this purpose; it needs to be an 8-inch or larger screen to see enough detail. Check for the latest technology and tablet news at Gadget Gestures.
Keep Up with Appointments
Appointments are best kept on a cloud-based calendar system like Google Calendar or something similar. Many apps can hook right into the Google Calendar system; it’s not necessary to use Google’s calendar app if you don’t wish to do so. Apple also has their own calendar system too. The benefit for users is that they can use a split-screen to see their calendar info and their task list at the same time. This lets them keep up with what’s got to be done, where they need to be, and emails to respond to without having to stop what they’re doing.
Using a second screen effectively doesn’t always have to mean adding a 24-inch LCD flat panel next to the first one and sharing your PC or Mac screen. There’s not always the space for that and people who travel on business cannot duplicate this setup. Instead, using a tablet as a second screen, it’s possible to get greater organization and productivity by reducing the number of interruptions occurring due to using one system and screen. Try it and see for yourself.