- Today, I wanna give you a tour of my desk.
I wanna show you through all of the tech that I use as part
of my job as creative director or remote software company.
This is the space where I design, live stream,
run my side business.
So I wanna give you a tour and show you through everything.
That's part of my workstation.
(melancholy piano music)
Well, welcome to my desk.
If you wanna see where my desk is in relation to the rest
of my home office, I uploaded a full office tour last week.
I should check that out on a card, linked up there
and see the rest office and all of my cool
like arty stuff that I have in it.
But in this video, I really want to focus and go deep
on all of the stuff that's like on my desk itself.
All of the tech that I use.
Let's start with the actual desk.
So it is a FlexiSpot standing desk,
so I can push this button here and we can go.
(table winding)
Let's put you back down for now
so that we can actually see everything in the frame.
I love having a standing desk.
I probably don't stand and work at as much as I should.
I think that's the same for a lot of standing desk owners.
But yeah, I always do find it really good for focus
and to combat feeling lethargic when I do stand up.
The desk top is a custom oak butcher block.
I ordered it from this company who actually makes
like kitchen benches
but yeah, you can put in custom dimensions
and I got them to round of corners nicely
and things like that.
I am feeling now like this desktop is a little bit too small
for me, as you can see, it is rather full, my desk.
And I wish that I could add a second monitor.
I think I mentioned that in my office tour.
I'm finding it hard to let this custom butcher block go
but that might be a change that they're making
in the future.
All right, let's get into the tech.
So the computer that I work on is an iMac Pro.
This is a model from 2017.
I believe they don't actually make these anymore
which is a shame
because I think it's a really great computer.
It has 32 GB of ram, 3.2 GHz processor.
Unfortunately not one of the M1 chips
because it's a little bit older.
And then I think it's got like 8 GB of graphics
but it served me really well.
It was quite a pricey purchase.
I won't lie, but it's done well for several years
and I know I will, for several years more.
Basically it handles everything that I throw at it.
So I love that.
And I have it set on this arm here so
that I can like move it back and forths when mostly
when I wanna film
and set the camera up, like in this direction.
So that's really useful.
I also like that it gives space under it,
to put all this junk.
The iMac Pro comes
with a really nice black Apple magic keyboard
and black magic mouse.
But I don't use either of those, instead for my keyboard
I use this mechanical keyboard that I painted myself.
I've got a whole video about that, that I'll link on a card.
But the process of painting the sides of the keys
that was super fun.
But I love the pop of color it adds.
And then instead of a mouse,
I actually use the Apple trackpad instead.
I do all of my work with this,
which some people are surprised to learn.
My designing, video editing,
anything that I do on my computer I can do with a trackpad
and I really like using the gestures and things like that.
It feels really natural to me.
With it I have this wrist rest, wrist rest
just to make it a little bit more ergonomic as well.
And it's been working out well for me.
I don't think I can go back to using regular mouse.
I just, I don't know.
This just suits me.
Connected to iMac, I have these Audioengine speakers,
which are fantastic.
I like inherited these
from my partner when he upgraded his and I got these.
So that's been awesome
because they're really, really great speakers.
And then also connected is some serious upgrades that I made
to my audio visual in the past year.
I started it live streaming a lot more.
Sometimes I'll play games on my switch
that I'll stream on my Twitch channel.
But mostly I stream a lot of my design work.
I like go live on YouTube
while I'm working on a project for my work at ConvertKit.
I'm also on a lot of calls.
I lead a team at ConvertKit.
And so, being in a leadership role means
that the there's a lot of meetings that happen.
And so I wanted to upgrade my webcam and my microphone.
The microphone was the first thing I upgraded.
I have this Shure SM7B mic setup,
which is maybe a little bit over the top
for what I need, honestly. But I really like it.
It's a mic that needs an audio interface to function.
You can't just plug it straight into the computer.
So I have my Focusrite Scarlett something.
I can't remember what it was called
but this is what the mic comes into.
And it's also what I have my headphones plugged
into as well.
I know we live in like a Bluetooth world
and I shouldn't be dealing
with like this wire all over my desk,
but I cannot part with these Bang & Olufsen H6 headphones.
They're just so nice.
I tried the, I think they're called the H9s
which is their Bluetooth version
but it just didn't sound as good to me as the wide ones.
And so I've kept with them, but this is pretty annoying.
And so I think I probably will
make that as an upgrade in the future.
Is find a pair of Bluetooth headphones that I like.
For now, I just hang these on the side of my desk
and deal with wire.
My mic itself is on this road arm
so that I can just bring it up
when it is time for me to have a call, time to use it.
And then the rest of the time
it can just sort of sit more tucked away in the corner.
And what's also connected to my mic
in between basically the microphone
and the audio interface is this, Cloudlifter.
Which lives in this cable tidy.
Maybe it's an ironic term
because these cables are not very tidy.
But it lives under my desk.
And it just boosts the gain a little on this mic
because it's a little bit quiet
but it just hides away down there.
So that's the audio upgrade.
And then for my camera,
I recently upgraded to using a Canon mirrorless.
This is a Canon M200 and I'm using this as my webcam.
It's connected to my iMac through an Elgato cam link.
And I've also got it sitting up here on an Elgato stand.
Is that what it's called? I guess.
But it's very handy,
because I can get it sitting in the middle of my computer
while still being moveable
so that whenever I move the computer,
I can also move the camera as well.
I love the quality of this camera.
Again, I think it's probably overkill for my situation
but I am streaming a lot more these days
and I thought, why not?
I've just got the kit lens on it
but I think it works out really well.
It's got a nice low lift stop to make my background nice
and blurry.
I did have a bit of a hard time getting it set up
because I like couldn't figure out at first
how to get all of the camera details off the screen.
And so that I don't have to charge the camera battery
all the time. It's connected to a power source.
Which sits on this shelf that I have back here.
Also on this shelf is a UPS,
an uninterrupted power source that I have my computer
and all of this stuff that is connected to my computer.
Everything plugged in under my desk runs through this here
so that if there's ever a blip in the power,
my computer doesn't shut down,
and all my equipment stays safe and keeps working.
I've tried to sort the cable situation as best I could
but there's just a lot of stuff connected you know.
What else?
Also for streaming I use this Elgato Stream Deck.
I don't actually just use it for streaming to be honest.
I also have some buttons set up just to do common tasks
like open Figma, open Zoom,
start a new meeting in my meeting room
and it's really handy just to punch those buttons.
I know I can get a lot more value out of this as well.
Like I wanna set up something to switch between
for example, using my speakers and using my headphones
just so I can like click a button
and have that go, rather than selecting it in the menu.
I don't know. It's definitely not necessary
but it's a nice to have.
You all notice as well? This big LED panel light
that I have behind my desk.
This is something that I bought specifically
for filming YouTube videos
but now I just have it permanently set up back there
and I turn it on whenever I'm streaming,
whenever I'm having a call and it gives some nice lighting.
It's angled up at the roof
so that it's not a harsh light in my face,
but instead it's like bouncing off the white ceiling
and making more like ambient light.
I have both that light and my camera
and also the purple LED lights that I have in my office
connected to this button right here, this little hue dot.
So I can just click this, whoop
and it turns everything on at the start of a call.
So that's very handy.
It's got a magnet on the back.
So I just have it stuck to the side of my desk.
And the last tech thing to mention I guess,
is just this charging pad that I have to charge my phone
or my AirPods at my desk.
And as for the non-tech side of things,
I have a couple of these coasters on my desk
just to try and protect this, oak desktop a little bit.
Although, there's many places where I've already
water stained it.
I always keep my bullet journal to the left hand side.
This is what I use on the daily
for writing my daily to-do list, planning things out.
I just really like doing
that on paper versus in a digital app.
I also have this note card system, which is made by Ugmonk.
This is called the Analog I believe.
And it's meant to be used for writing daily to-do lists.
But what I actually use it for instead
is writing a weekly list of the life admin stuff
or the side project stuff that I need to get done that week.
And so seeing it there in front of me,
helps me make sure I make time for it
in one of my daily to-do lists
that are write in my blog journal.
I think that's it.
I hope you enjoy this tour of my workspace.
And like I said, if you want to see my full office,
more details about everything in that,
that'll be linked on a card.
You can go watch my office tour.
If you're new around here
and you've never tuned in for one of my design live streams,
which is like what most of this equipment is used for.
Then please hit subscribe, turn on notifications.
So you'll know when I'm going live next.
I stream my real work projects whenever I can.
So you can tune in and hang out with me.
Co-work while I design websites, build them in web flow.
It's a lot of fun
and I'd love to have you join the next one.
All right. Thanks for watching.
Hope you have a good week
and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye.
(bouncy music)