This productivity advice is so simple…if you aren’t using two monitors (or three!) you are operating at a sub-optimal pace. When an agent in my office hires a new assistant, the FIRST thing I tell that assistant is to get dual monitors. I don’t know about you, but I often have many tabs open all at the same time. Gmail, Top Producer, MLS, Facebook, and DotLoop are always open on my computer.
Here’s how it works. Ron Henderson (my mega agent) will email me requesting listing documents be prepared for e-signatures for a client. He will give me their names, how much they owe on the house, and the listing price. I leave the email open on my left screen and open Top Producer on the right screen. I look up the client and find their address. Back on the left screen, I open a new tab to the county tax records so I can find out exactly how their names appear on the deed. On the right screen, I open a new tab to DotLoop and fill out the forms based on what I’m looking at on the left screen.
You get the idea. My left screen is a laptop and my right screen is a monitor. I chose to use a laptop back in the day before cloud storage was really popular so that I could use my work laptop to work from home on days when snow or ice prevented me from going into the office here in the Midwest. These days, I never bother taking it home because everthing I need is stored in Google Drive or Dropbox.
If you don’t have two monitors, have your agent buy you one. Once you see how much faster you are able to maneuver on the computer, I promise you will never go back. In fact, I’m a bit in limbo with my home computer. I just ditched my old laptop (which was my left screen) and bought a faster desktop computer, but I haven’t yet bought a second monitor. So I’m down to one and wow is it frustrating how much it slows me down.
What about you? Have you tried two monitors? Or three? I’d love to know how this has worked for you.
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It’s a MUST HAVE. WE got 24″ dual monitors for all staff. Then, you can use split window feature and keep everything you need open. Huge productivity increase. It’s not multi- tasking, it assists with data entry, grabbing docs for docusign or emailing is a breeze too. Love it and won’t ever go back. 🙂 Thanks for starting this!
Awesome! I love an agent who invests in their staff.
I cannot agree enough! Two are a must! There are so many occasions where two screens need to be up at once and doing the side by side on one screen can get to be a pain (not just for your brain but for your eyes). I miss my office every time I have to do work at home with one monitor. Much more efficient with two! Any agent would be pleased to see their assistant getting more work done at a faster speed and this is surely the way to do it.
Yes! Being comfortable at work is a must. In fact, right behind using two monitors I recommend getting the most comfortable office chair that fits you.
I am very reliant on my dual monitors! As you said, I have so many tabs open at once. It would really slow me down to have to keep going back and forth from tab to tab. Thanks for the article!
It’s so good to see that several of are already using dual monitors!
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