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This video is brought to you by Brilliant. Working from home has become the new status
quo in the last 2 years. With that, millions of people have had no choice
but to reconstruct their homes into offices, creating various types of workspaces. In this
video, we talk about how to effectively set up and revamp your workspace so that you feel inspired,
productive and rested as much as possible. I will not be referring to specific products,
but I’ll make sure to put a list of decent product recommendations in the description below.
In most cases, when we talk about home workspace, we usually discuss desk setups.
If you are lucky to have a dedicated room/office or studio, that's
even better. The principals are pretty much the same.
So let's start with the position of your desk. As outdoor creatures, we feel happier and more
inspired when we are outside. Taking that into consideration, a good practice is to try and
position your desk near a good, natural light source. Sunlight, outside life and greenery,
helps boost serotonin, boosting morale and creativity. Always face the light and don't
let the light hit you from behind since this will result in reflections, reduced monitor visibility,
eye strain and poor posture as a result. If possible, try not to glue your workstation to
a wall unless you have a nice window in front or above. I've done this more than once, and it has
always made me feel more closed up and miserable. A friend of mine, Michael, who has an insanely
beautiful home setup and social media presence, recently rearranged his office, moving away from
the wall, putting his desk in the middle of the room, giving the whole vibe more negative space
and room to breathe facing the light and windows as we just discussed. Giving your desk frontal
space gives your eyes some rest, too, because you won't be stuck at the same arm-length focal length
when you have a wall in front, but rather glance and rest your eyes at a distance.
When it comes to ergonomics, there are few simple rules you can follow. First, the
chair. Remember that the chair should be adjusted according to your mouse and keyboard and not to
yourself and not to your desired posture, feet length or style. The mouse and keyboard are the
items that are in fixed positions, so you should accommodate your chair's height and position to
them. Raise or lower your chair to a place where your arms are close to a 90 degrees position.
If your feet are up in the air, use some sort of footrest. Avoid sitting too high to avoid
wrist-twisting and not too low to put the weight of your hands or your forearms. Don't
sit straight. This might sound like something that you might read in a book, but sitting completely
straight is a recipe for fatigue and slouching. Instead, try and lock your chair to the first
or second leaning position to give your body a good resting posture and less arch on your
neck. Arching your neck leads to headaches, and it is the same reason to avoid recliner
style of sitting. If you have non-adjustable chair armrests that don't fit the ergonomic practices,
try and remove your armrests. Removing them might turn out to be the more comfortable
sitting position too. A chair with a suitable headrest is better than one with bad armrests.
Let's talk about the monitor. Get at least a 27 inch or preferably a 32-inch monitor. Anything
below 27 inches will give your eyes unnecessarily strain, and while on the topic of that, try
to use a 4k monitor with a proper scaling setup. Remember, your smartphone most likely has a better
screen than your monitor, so why cut corners on something that you look at over 150 hours a month?
I'll be covering the best work from home monitors choices and set up next week, so subscribe and
hit the bell icon if you are interested. Raise your monitor so that your eyesight is horizontal
to the top portion of your monitor. If you can't raise your monitor enough, use books or
something else to lift it up. A monitor arm will be a great alternative, too, since it will free
up even more space on your tabletop. If you think you need two monitors, consider a curved ultrawide
for that purpose. Dual monitor setups are hard to focus on and serve the same purpose. Still,
they are a more significant investment with the expense of having ugly bezels in the middle.
Your peripherals, mouse and keyboard should be exactly where your hands naturally rest on
the desk. In many cases, you might find compact keyboards more comfortable unless you deal with a
lot of numbers. The idea is not to push your mouse too far to the right or to the left if you are a
lefty. Someone once said that you shouldn't have to reach your hands to grab your tools.
Let's talk about isolation. Clearing the noise is what makes you a productivity machine.
If you can't afford to work from a separate room at home,
create your workspace and desk set up as a purposeful corner or segment of your shared space.
It should be something that is distinguished from the home setup and is used just for work purposes.
If necessary, consider a folding layout where you put everything away at the end of the day.
The actual desk should be around 30 per cent larger than your monitor - that's my personal
observation. Of course, suppose you work with many documents and paper. In that case, you might
prefer to have a more oversized tabletop to have space to spread everything around. Choose size
based on monitor and type of work. Also, choose a tabletop that will fit your taste since this will
be something that you will look at for hours. You might think it's not essential, but inspiration
comes from your surroundings, and you wouldn't want to be surrounded by an ugly tarpaulin or a
messed up tabletop. BTW, if you end up enjoying this video, SUBSCRIBE…because WHY NOT?!?
Mechanical keyboards are hot right now, but they usually require a palm rest.
If you need a good keyboard, but you don't really care about the type, a good choice
would be to go for a low profile keyboard to avoid fatigue or pressure on the wrists.
Your pointing device could be a mouse or trackpad, or both, like me. Choose your
pointing device based on your workflow and if necessary, go for a mouse palm rest. Unless
you are really into precision peripherals, go for wireless options with built in batteries
that can be charged with USB-C. You wouldn’t want to have to deal with charging batteries.
The second priority to the workspace after the monitor is the headphones, but before we get to
that remember to take a break while you work. Work in segments of like 50 minutes. Choose a priority
task, set a timer and start working on that task and only that task until the timer goes off. While
you do that - No distraction - No social media - No answering the phone. Stop working and take a
break when you hear the timer. If you don't feel like getting some fresh air and want to take your
mind off something and self-improve, you can try Brilliant, which is today's video sponsor.
Brilliant is a problem solving based website and app with a hands-on approach, with over
60 interactive courses from Computer science to Neural Networks, Math Foundations and much more.
I am currently taking a course on Logic to help me stretch my analytic muscles so to speak. Using
limited information I have to make predictions, eliminating the impossible to uncover the truth.
Logic helps spot fallacies and it is the study of reasoning and argumentation,
definitely a skill to improve while working from home. Brilliant’s exercises improve
critical thinking in the means of storytelling, code-writing, interactive challenges, and problem
solving. The platform is brilliant, pun intended, because it puzzles you, surprises you, and expands
your understanding of the modern world. So if you want to start improving your
critical thinking skills, click on the first link in the description below or
go to brilliant.org/ThisIsE and sign up for free and BTW, the first 200 people to upgrade
with this link will get 20% off the annual Premium subscription.
Thank you Brilliant for sponsoring this video.
So…HEADPHONES - If you plan to work from a shared space, the headphones are your way of spacing out
and focusing, they are very important. When you choose your headphones, think of the following:
They should be on ear or over-ear headphones. You'll be using them for hours, so they need
to be able to have a good seal and, most of all, fit comfortably on your head.
There shouldn't be any ear pressure or discomfort on the top of your head either.
Buds, are not a healthy choice, having them stuck in your ears for hours.
So, go for a noise-cancelling option, especially if you have kids or share the room with someone
else. If you really want to space out, try noise-cancelling in combination with white noise
and I guarantee you'll forget what's going on around you.
Although the sound is essential, working from home most likely results in virtual meetings. All your
meetings should be done via headphones because you don't want to be the one that echoes and reverbs
during a meeting with 20 other colleagues. If the budget allows it, get the headphones with the best
possible microphone because sounding confident and not repeating yourself can take you places.
Workspace speakers are optional for any setup and are good for when you have a dedicated room to
work in. They are not recommended for meetings or for doing precision audio from home, but
if you can have a pair or a system, that's great.
If possible, invest in a good web camera or even a real camera setup if you'll be working from home
for the foreseeable future. With that, try and get a decent separate microphone that can really
make you sound good. Both the camera and the mic are your window to your colleges, your career and
business development, so looking and sounding as good as possible is not something to take lightly.
So to make everything look like a catalogue or basically turn your workspace into an inspiration
place, you have to organize and cable manage as much as possible. Even if you don't feel like it,
it pays off once you do it. Run everything to the back of the desk and maybe get some
railways and other cable organizers that you can use. Adhesive Velcro tape is your best friend,
and you can use that to mount all power adapters and outlets behind or on the bottom of the
tabletop. Be sure to keep everything as flat as possible and pushed as further back as possible
since you don't want to feel knee discomfort when you sit. Remember, raise up whatever your can,
like putting your monitor on a monitor arm or attach things underneath to have a clean tabletop.
Nice accessories that you can place are, of course, plants, preferably
real and accessories like a wireless charger or a charging hub that you can
use quickly when necessary to top up your devices. A good reading light or a monitor
light might also be a good idea when it gets dark and especially in the winter.
As always, it's been an absolute pleasure,
This is E Over and out