An ad phrase that caught me ear the other day on the New York Times was, “Since when is an airline’s schedule more important than yours?” It was for “The New Delta” and I had to laugh, because it’s a really odd way of saying, “Things have been screwed up lately, but we’re trying to fix them.” They have a lot more to coordinate than I do—with their airplanes, luggage, pilots, crew, fuel, and little pillows and bags of nuts all having to arrive at the same place in the middle of a long day. If they are to continue functioning at all, their schedule must be more important than mine. But something about that notion is way too socialist. People really don’t want to hear it.

The funny thing is, even if their point is simply that the two schedules, mine and the airline’s, are ideally of equal importance, they still leave room for the hyper-individualistic interpretation that my schedule is way more important than theirs. I’m sure there are many who see it that way, and that’s why we are going to hell in millions of individual handbaskets, with little pillows provided through a partnership with Delta.

So, thanks to my father’s generocity, this week I was paid—in the form of a new computer—for what would have been a pro-bono web site for one my family’s many enterprises. And it actually turned out to be more exciting than I thought. A computer is just a computer, right? We all have to upgrade, but it’s basically the same thing. But every once in a while, something comes along that changes the way I work and reminds me of the value of proper tools.

In this case, I was upgrading from a PowerMac G5, a big hunky desktop machine. I don’t know why I thought I’d need all of those card slots or hard drive bays. Maybe I just bought it as a doorstop for my ego. Anyway, over the years I only ever added RAM to it. So when choosing a new machine, the number of card slots didn’t enter into it. The decision really came down to portability vs. screen real estate, and even though my life is in mobile turmoil right now, I opted for screen real estate.

Four days with the new machine and I’m utterly convinced I’ve made the right choice. I bought a 24” iMac, and I now have a luxurious 7.1 megapixel LCD landscape in front of me. It feels like my productivity has doubled. It’s similar to the way I felt when Exposé came out. The main screen is 1920x1200, and I think that makes the biggest difference for me. But the secondary screen (my old 20” LCD) is also indispensable, because I can now give my e-mail, IM, and a full calendar the space they deserve.

That’s the thing: More space really changes the way I work. For example, if I keep iCal open on my secondary screen, it becomes the virtual equivalent of tacking a calendar to the wall. That is very, very valuable. It means that I can rely on iCal because I don’t have to find and open it each time I want to add to it. It means that I can actually use iCal now. Because I can just glance at it. I can rely on iCal always being there. So the secondary screen becomes the screen at which I glance while I’m working on other things. It’s the screen of passive interruption—the communication center. I can be interrupted, but without the real work around. Psychologically, even with the ease Exposé, that makes a big difference to me. It’s counterintuitive, but more space seems to allow me to focus better.

My secondary screen is the virtual cork board above my virtual desk, and I think that over the next couple years, as the desktop metaphor finally dies out, its replacement will have to have this functionality in some form.

Anyway, I’m grateful to have this new machine and the productivity boost that comes with it. (thanks, Dad!)