Make screens a priority

How long do you think that you spend looking at some form of screen every day?

Television? Laptop? Mobile phone?

According to the New York Times it’s likely to be longer than you think:

In fact, adults are exposed to screens — TVs, cellphones, even G.P.S. devices — for about 8.5 hours on any given day, according to a study released by the Council for Research Excellence on Thursday. TV remains the dominant medium for media consumption and advertising, the study found. The data suggests that computer usage has supplanted radio as the second most common media activity.(Print ranks fourth.)

That’s right 8.5 hours a day.

Even excluding TVs that’s a lot of time, spent on screens at work. So why do we spend so little on the actual screen itself? It’s the primary tool that we use.

I’m constantly amazed when I go around offices to see the way that people are using and abusing the screen that they use all day, every day.

I’ve already written about multiple monitors. If I could communicate one thing to people that I know would radically change their productivity it would be that. But there is more to it than that.

In most organisations that I know screen purchases are tightly controlled. You have to be really special to have anything more than the standard screen. In many ways this control is completely disproportionate to the value that a good screen gives and the relative cost.

The number of people who have cracked or severely scratched mobile phone screens never  ceases to amaze.

There are times when I feel like going around with a cleaning cloth and revealing to people the wonders that lurk beneath. Go on, I dare you, clean a screen today.