I gave up on external monitors a long while ago. When you have to have them, it's indicative of a workflow that needs to be fiddly about the data you're working

I gave up on external monitors a long while ago. When you have to have them, it's indicative of a workflow that needs to be fiddly about the data you're working on, usually either manually monitoring a lot of stuff, or parsing things on one screen(docs) to do things on the other(editors). Some jobs do need it, and I'm not denying that, but if you're doing something where you control more of the environment ground-up and dipping into a variety of digital tools for parts of the workflow, going with paper notebooks and the phone as the second screen can be a lot better; Gridded or dotted 8x5" or A5 spiral notebooks are very convenient for having "enough" visual structure in a document and they aren't particularly more or less constrained than toting around a second monitor. Prop them up on a bookstand so they're at an ergonomic height, and give yourself a color multipen so you can add highlighting and organization by color. Do your tasks by documenting the plan in the book and specific editing functions or build processes you plan to use so that during execution, you have both a plan and a cheat sheet, and it's always in the same place. When you need to share, take a photo.