Multiple Desktops

It's no secret or surprise that I greatly prefer Linux to Windows for a working environment. However, reality being the stubborn and uncompromising force that it is, I've found myself increasingly having to use Windows just to decrease the amount of friction in my life. Ideology is for the young.

That said, there are some things that Linux provides that I have sorely missed in Windows. One of those is the ability to have multiple desktops. That is, under Linux, I can have, say, four desktops active at the same time, with different windows open on each of them. Moreover, I can switch back and forth between them with a keyboard shortcut, or a mouse click in a special widget on the taskbar.

People who have only used Windows are always puzzled by this concept. "Why would you want to do that?" they ask me, with genuine befuddlement evident in their faces. The reason for having multiple desktops is that it allows me to separate my concerns, to organize my work into distinct places that help me keep my tasks straight.

Here's another way to think about it. Would you want to live in a house with only one room, where your refrigerator, your toilet and your bed were all within the same four walls? Unless you are pathological in some way, the answer would clearly be "No way!". However, that is precisely the predicament that Windows users are in every day.

Using four desktops, on the other hand, I can put email on one, iTunes and other media players on another, my current major task on a third, and still have a fourth desktop available if another important task pops up later in the day. When that second task pops up, I don't have to futz around minimizing windows and such to clear things away so that I can work on the new problem. I just switch to a new desktop, do whatever is needed to, then go back to my previous task's desktop. In the meantime, I can also handle a bit of email, and fiddle with iTunes to pick another playlist. And one is not limited to four desktops. There were occasions a few years ago when I made regular use of eight desktops, although that was really more a symptom of a problem with the way my job was defined (or rather, not defined).

Sure Windows let's you minimize and maximize individual windows easily. However, that does not really address the fact that a working context almost always involves two or more windows. For example, when I'm programming, I have at least one window running a code editor, and another where I can test the code. When I'm composing an email message or working on a document, I am usually looking at other email messages, documents, or web pages someplace else. When I'm updating my calendar, I'm looking at email, to-do lists, and the like.

Each of these sets of windows constitutes a working context. You use all of the windows in a given context, shifting your attention quickly back and forth between them. Having to minimize/maximize or shuffle windows around with mouse clicks is a big impediment to productivity. It is this problem that has made the use of multiple monitors more popular lately. However, multiple monitors are not really feasible for the laptop user, or for the budget-constrained.

The real problem arises when I want to go back to an earlier context that I was working in. With a single desktop, I would have to bring several windows back into view at one time, either by maximizing windows that I had previously minimized, or by riffling through all the windows open on the screen to get the ones I wanted back "on top", that is, in view. That is simply too much bother most of the time, so my productivity slowly drops as I lose track of where I am. In fact, I often found that I have had to open the same window two or even three times because I could not find it when I need it.

So, given the need to have multiple desktops in Windows, what are the choices? Lately I have taken to checking out the ever-growing pile of well-done posts at Lifehacker.com, which is an outstanding multi-author blog devoted to personal productivity. They have done several posts over the last year or so about tools for multiple desktops, or as they refer to them, virtual desktops.

The first of these tools that I tried was Virtual Desktop Manager, which was one of Microsoft's PowerToys. These are apps that you can find on Microsoft's website, but which come with this proviso:

We take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista.

Given that ringing endorsement, I thought it only fair to give it a try. Although the Virtual Desktop Manager did in fact more or less provide multiple desktops, it was flat-out buggy. In particular, it kept losing windows. I would open a window on one desktop, switch to a different desktop, and then later switch back, only to find that the window was gone, or at least invisible. I could see from the Windows Task Manager that the application was still running, but there was no way to access the window. I suffered through this for a few days, and then uninstalled it and went looking for something else.

Next I tried Virtual Dimension, which Lifehacker listed as a 'Download of the Day' for 4/27/2006. It worked pretty well, and was nicely configurable. The basic application worked well enough that I never even got around to checking out a lot of the options that it had. Sadly though, it began to really annoy me. Once in a while it would simply close down a window. This seemed to happen most often with Windows Explorer, so there was no real harm done. Also, it had an odd penchant for opening new windows on the wrong desktop. This happened most often with Internet Explorer. When I was using Microsoft's Outlook Web Access in IE to access email for my new employer's mail, Virtual Dimension would sometimes open windows for new mail messages on the current desktop. However, most of the time it would open them on some other desktop, usually one where I had previously moved a mail message so that I could work with it. It took me a while to figure this out, because of course there was no indication that the window I wanted was already open somewhere else. One of the most annoying things was that for some applications (such as MS Access, which my new employer uses to track our time), Virtual Dimension would show the same window on every desktop, thus defeating the raison d'etre for multiple desktops.

My annoyance level got high enough that today I decided to try out another multiple desktop tool. I went back to Lifehacker and found another package called Dexpot, which was the Download of the Day for Dec. 28, 2006. It also had good reviews from other Lifehacker readers. Other good signs are that (1) it was produced by a German software company, who (2) gives away the product for free to individuals, but charges for companies. If they expect to charge for it, you'd hope that they would have spent at least a little bit of effort with software quality.

Dexpot installed easily. It has lots of configurable features that I've only begun to check out. The biggest thing for me, though, will be that it not lose windows, nor put them in the wrong spot. So far, so good.

Of course, I wouldn't have to mess around with any of this in Linux, whose window manager software works reliably, and which doesn't drop windows, move them around spontaneously, or make them show up in multiple places unexpectedly. Microsoft is still trailing behind, not providing features that other operating systems had years ago. I guess I should be grateful that the folks in Redmond haven't made it altogether impossible for third-party software vendors to at least attempt writing applications to make up those deficiencies in Windows.

How Do You Keep Up?

Over the years, I've often complained about how fast stuff (mainly information and tasks) pours into my life. I regularly said things such as "It's like trying to take a sip from a firehouse -- it's a good way to lose a lip." I'm certainly not unique in feeling this way. Moreover, as is now obvious to anyone with an internet connection, this problem has not gotten any better with the march of time. Knowing that I am at home on extended medical leave, you would perhaps think that I would have more time to stay caught up, and fewer required tasks to deal with, but alas, it is not so.

Periodically I go through cycles of blissful obliviousness, shocked recognition, stolid denial, bleak despair, sullen resignation, and philosophical acceptance about this issue. Once in a while, I learn something interesting that just possibly might improve matters. A couple of days ago I ran across an essay by Kathy Sierra entitled "The Asymptotic Twitter Curve" which makes clearer for me what the real problems are. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the issue is not so much the volume and speed of incoming stuff, but rather my ability to focus my attention on that tiny fraction of the torrent which genuinely warrants attention. However, Sierra's analysis of the mechanism of the offending behaviors was really insightful. Again, it is not the facts that surprised me, but the degree to which those facts impacted my ability to work.

Sierra's essay starts off talking about interruptions, and how each succeeding technological development seems to shorten the mean time between interruptions. She has a wonderful graph that illustrates this perfectly:



(Image used without permission, but Hey! I want you to go read her post! This is just an appetizer.) Twitter, it turns out, is like the hellish union of inane blogging and inane IMing. It's sole purpose is to allow a group of people to provide for each other the answer to that cosmic question "What are you doing now?", in real time of course. Far, far worse than useless.

Twitter is of no interest to me. What does interest me greatly, however, are Sierra's comments on focus, flow and interruption. 'Flow' is a notion from human performance psychology. It refers to that wonderful state one enters when completely engrossed in a single activity. In such a state, one is able to function at a very high and effective level. If memory serves, the notion of flow was first applied to describe how very talented athletes 'got into' their performance. They learned to concentrate so completely that they become aware only of the game, the competition, their performance. They forget about themselves, their anxieties, the crowd, the arena, the officials, and so on. Sometimes this condition was also called 'getting into a zone'.

Somewhat later performance researchers recognized that the notion of flow also applies to many other disciplines ranging from the arts to brain surgery. I have certainly experienced this state many times in my software work over the years, but far less frequently in recent years. The fact of the matter is that the best way to be happy when one is working is to be in a flow state. This is probably one of the reasons why I have been unhappy in my work this past decade or so. I almost never had a chance to get into a flow state with my work.

I was particularly struck by Sierra's analysis of the truly insidious nature of interruptions, and why they are so deadly for flow experiences. She has two graphs near the end of her article that show this. One depicts how a person would typically perceive interruptions over the course of an hour. The other depicts what really happened over that hour. The killers are the little interruptions that we cause ourselves. As she says "WE cause interruptions because we are addicted to 'staying in the loop'." That is so, so true of me. I love being connected. It is amazingly addictive. In my last job, the company made heavy use of IM. The excuse was that some of our co-workers were located elsewhere, and that it was more efficient to pop quick questions to them through IM. Really, though, I think that the real reason was that most of my co-workers , who were much younger than I (roughly 25-35), were used to and even dependent on IM. They used IM to talk to each other, even from neighboring desks, particularly if the subject was not one that a manager should overhear. Likewise, they spent a lot of time talking with people outside our work.

It didn't take long to suck me in. I have to admit, there is a certain warm, wicked glow that non-manager-type personnel feel when making sardonic anti-management IM comments to each other during meetings. (Yes, we even took our wirelessly connected laptops into meetings.) I kept exploring other IM possibilities, even setting up a Jabber server on my home machine for a group of friends. At one point I was using three different IM clients to talk to people on a bunch of different IM networks. (One is sobered by the realization that taking medical leave to deal with a life-threatening condition might have been the only way to disconnnect thoroughly from this compulsive real-time communication.)

When you add in blogs and feeds and feed readers, not to mention email and discussion groups, it is exactly like a drug addiction. No matter how much you get, it's not enough. One of my particular weaknesses is news, both of the Google News kind, and the more specialized kinds typified by Digg, Slashdot and now Google Reader. One could spend all day spelunking through this maze of twisty little passages all alike, and never, ever come up for air. I act as if it is dreadfully important to assimilate all inputs, and miss no possible bit of incoming information.

So, what is one to do? Sierra semi-jokingly refers to a 12-step program for 'in the loop' addicts. That may be what it takes. In the meantime, simply turning off those distractions is a start. I know this is blindingly obvious, but I could simply choose not run any email client all the time, nor any IM client, or any feed reader. If they are not running, they will not interrupt me. Instead, I should limit their use to specific, limited periods of my work day.

Another culprit is trying to do several things at the same time. Like a brightly-colored, highly attractive leech, the seductive idea of multi-tasking actually drains one's ability to focus. If I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that trying to flip back and forth between two or more tasks gives all of them short shrift. A task that is truly worth doing should have my attention, all of it.

I remember reading an article several years ago about how little of a typical work week goes toward completing useful tasks. I was struck by the article's claim that in reality we spend only a small fraction of our work hours, say 5-10 per week, on tasks we should be working on. Another way to look at it is like this: If I could completely focus my attention, I could get the equivalent of a typical week's work done in a single day, and then take the rest of the week off. This claim very much resonates with me. I'm certain that there have been many, many weeks in the past few years in which I got less than 5 hours of honest-to-God useful work done.

So, here's my plan, starting now:

• Avoid having any email client (Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc.), any IM client (Google Chat, AIM, etc.) or any source of news (Google News, Google Reader, etc.) open except when I am deliberately using them.
• Avoid multi-tasking. If this means I have to wait for some painfully slow process to complete, then I will wait for it, rather than flipping over to some other task in order to 'make better use of my time'.
  

Nothing startling here. What would be startling, I suppose, would be if I manage to hold to this discipline for any substantial length of time. Check back with me in a while.

It is interesting to look at the behavior of my kids and their friends. They claim that multi-tasking works for them. For example, they insist that they can listen to loud, driving music while studying Spanish. I don't know, but it's hard to see how that can work. I know that I can't write at all if there is any music playing that has lyrics in a language I have even the faintest understanding of. (Admittedly, I can sometimes write fairly dense prose while listening, say, to Russian choral music, or Dwarvish chants from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. But then, I don't speak Russian or Dwarvish.) Likewise, I cannot do math or programming if there is any music going on at all. Still, my kids claim that I'm just old-fashioned (not to mention just old), and that they can handle it even if I can't. I once caught my son Dave talking on the phone, while playing music on the computer, carrying on several IM conversations, and watching TV. (He probably was supposed to be doing homework as well.) I would probably have had a nervous breakdown trying to do that. I rather tend to agree with Sierra on this point:

We're evolving much, much, much too slowly... Brain 2.0 isn't coming anytime soon.