As the most
of us working in an office, with the pandemic hitting in 2020, sooner or later,
I grabbed my stuff and went home. Back then, my flat had 25 m² and everything
was packed into one room. Since then, I evolved the home office game step by
step as I noticed how important for work quality it is. Now I reached the point
where going back to the office would actually be a step down when it comes to
equipment and space. So, let’s have a look at the results of, at this point, about
two years working from home!
1. Your environment:
It is by far no surprise
that the environmental possibilities you have are the limitations you have to
build your setup in. Also, money is your second big limitation, but you can get
really far, even on a low budget.
The first thing you must
do is to find the best spot at your home to work from. This varies on a lot of
conditions: do you live alone? Or do you have to take care of the routines,
needs and privacy of other family members or friends you live with? How much space
do you have and how much do you need? Do you only work on your laptop, attach it
to external devices like multiple monitors or do you maybe shift tones of physical
stuff around and need a lot of space to organize it? It might be a good idea to
discuss your individual situation with people who already work from home so they
might be able to give you advices from a perspective that you don’t have (yet).
Also: ask yourself how things might change in the near future. Might your child
leave for collage, and you will get extra space to rearrange or does your boyfriend
is going to join you, what will limit your space?
2. Your job exclusive needs:
Depending on what your
job contains, you might have some special requirements, for example if you are working
with sensitive data, you might choose your setup to not have the monitors face a
window or even can be read by a family member walking by. If you are on a lot
of meetings or working in a call center, you might want to be able to close a
door between your workplace and the kids playing after school.
3. Your personal needs:
Did the chair in your
office never really fitted the way you sit? Well, now it’s the opportunity to
fix that! Test out some office chairs, maybe from friends or even at stores.
Some vendors also offer a trial, so you can return a chair if it doesn’t fit
you. Good office chairs don’t have to be fancy; they just have to fit you! If
you are unsure what exactly your body needs, especially if you already have health
issues, go and ask your doc before purchasing a chair.
The second thing about
ergonomics is your desk: I made the mistake of working on a way to small desk for
a long time, so I wasn’t able to bring enough space between the monitor and my eyes
and that also went on my whole posture. It clearly is a personal decision but
if you are sitting more than 4 hours a day, think of maybe getting a height
adjustable desk! I know they aren’t cheap but as much as I can tell after three
months, it was such a good investment. Everyone knows that these tables are
good for your back, but did you ever thought what standing does to you after
you had a big meal for lunch that your kids cooked for you? ;)
I really started getting
sleepy every day after lunch because at home you have even less input from your
environment that could get you over the hole of food coma. Standing up after your
meal with a coffee in your hand and work standing for like 30 minutes can carry
you unexpecting well. Another point is your body language on meetings. I
realized that if I have to advocate a difficult opinion or have to present
something to an audience in an online meeting, my whole appearance changes if I
can do it standing up as I might be doing in a local meeting.
So, in some way one
could say, it directly affects my job performance.
Another great thing additionally
to the desk might be a laptop stand. You can raise your laptop up and tilt it a
little bit. Depending on the design it might also support your laptops airflow
compared to it sitting flat on your desk. Also, if you can’t afford a height adjustable
table, a laptop mount could, with a little engineering creativity, get you
covered.
Also, I recently purchased
myself a lamp that is specially designed to operate in front of monitors as it
doesn’t shine in all directions but only at the space between you and the
monitors. By this, reflections are avoided, and you still have a second light
aside your monitor what is healthy for your eyes and reduces (at least in my
case) sleepiness on rainy days or in winter. It is also great if you sometimes
do some studies offline, like me reading the CISSP guide by Shon Harris right
now. ;)
You might have additional
personal needs to be fulfilled, I’m not experienced with, like support for diverse
handicaps. As you are now in the position to decide it yourself, you should take
the effort to make it a perfect fit just for you. Because that is one of the
main benefits of working from home (aside not getting taken down by a global disease).
4. Your technical setup:
And down the rabbit hole
we go. On the technical setup, you might never be able get to the perfect stage,
depending on how affine to this stuff you are. But still, a core concept is the
same for everyone:
First of all, what is
the main device you work with? Is it a laptop or a desktop pc or even an all in
one? Is it offered by your company or your private device? You should go and
clear up the limitations given by your organization on what you are allowed to
attach to the device and so on. Everything else discussed here is useless if
your system is slow, lagging or the software crashes. Mostly you might not be
able to decide on that on your own if you get a device from your company. But
if you didn’t have your own one until moving into your home office, you might talk
to the responsible guy at your company to explain your needs.
And then the question is:
what can you work best with?
As I’m working from a
company laptop, I only have a small monitor by default, but I must operate on
multiple systems and with multiple documents at the same time. So, I do need a
lot of screen space. As I went with two 27” monitors and the 15” one from my laptop
and that combination works just fine for me, it might be that you are perfectly
fine with one 23” monitor or you might have a big curved one. This is really a
thing about personal preference, as much as mouse and keyboard.
In general, talking about
mouse and keyboard, an ergonomic approach is never a bad thing. But ergonomic
isn’t the same for everyone as we do all have different shapes and conditions
and the periphery must adjust to that. It is only important that it fits best
for your work. No matter if it is stylish or just the 15-dollar mouse from the
local tech store. I personally fell in love with mechanical keyboards what made
it expensive for me but worth the trade as I’m typing like all day. Just one
personal note if you think about using a mechanical keyboard for work: think twice
before choosing clicky switches! Yes, they sound amazing, yes, they feel
good when typing, but aside people on keyboard ASMR-streams, who ever is with
you on a call or might be sleeping next door could easily start hating you for
your fancy clicky blue cherry switches. ;)
If you are on a lot of online
meetings, also do everyone the pleasure to invest in an adequate headset and
microphone. Nothing is more disturbing for productivity on a call than ear-hurting
background noises, not understandable participants, and sound-loops. Like, I
really don’t like hearing myself once, I don’t need that twice with a delay.
Alright, now you have all
your devices attached to you company laptop and then: your chef calls, you have
to drive to the customer for an emergency treatment. So, you unplug all your
devices in a hurry and when you return tiered from that little adventure two
hours later… there are cables everywhere and you have to sort them all and plug
them back in and… actually you still have work to do but its already 8 pm.
Shit.
Hold up, there’s an easy
solution for this: docking stations. Choosing the right docking station depends
mainly on two variables: first, what connectivity options your system provides and
second, what you need to attach all your peripheral devices. In the best case,
you then only have to plug in and out one cable when leaving and returning the
home office. Also, for an home office setup, if your system allows that via
thunderbolt for example, it is a big plus if your laptop can charge via your docking
station, so you can easily leave your charger in your bag and never forget it
when working outside in the wilds.
After we talked about the
experiences, I made building up my workplace the last two years, now here is
the final result:
Not quiet as fancy as
may expected mh? But it is just the right one for me: clean, a lot of space and
a good but affordable technical standard. Your perfect might look completely different.
Feel free to share it
anyways! :D
