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(upbeat music)
Offices are not always
the ideal place to work.
They're often uninspiring,
they take way too long to get to,
and more often than not,
the printer's broken.
Luckily, there is an alternative,
and getting to it doesn't
take a whole lot more
than simply getting out of bed.
So it's more than likely
that you've recently found
yourself working from home,
not by choice,
but by necessity.
That being said,
as someone who's been working from home
for more than a decade,
I can tell you that
working from home is kind of awesome.
Your commute gets eliminated,
you have a lot more control
over how you set up your workspace,
and technically you don't even
have to wear pants.
That said, it also does
come with certain challenges.
When there are no bosses
or coworkers around,
it can be a lot harder
to stay on task
and to avoid certain temptations,
and every decision becomes yours to make,
which can be a little overwhelming
when you're used to having your schedule
at least partly set by someone else,
so this is the start of a series of videos
on this channel that will teach you
how to work from home
as effectively as possible,
and with this first video,
we are starting
with your environment,
with your workspace.
Now, the first thing I wanna say here is that
there are no hard and fast rules
when it comes to setting up your workspace.
One of my friends often works from his couch,
and another one writes all of his video scripts
from a bean bag chair.
That being said,
I think there are two main elements
that you wanna consider
when setting up your workspace,
separation and isolation.
So by separation,
I'm talking about having a space
that has a singular purpose.
You wanna set up a space
that is only used for work,
and then have another space
that's used for relaxation.
The surroundings that we put ourselves in
have a certain amount of influence
over our psychological states,
and in the choices that we make.
So you wanna make sure
that your brain doesn't have to work
too hard against your environment
to stay on task.
Secondly, you wanna aim to be isolated
from people who might interrupt you,
and honestly, this is a big problem
in offices as well,
especially since many of them
have moved to that open office
concept without walls,
but it's an even bigger issue
when you're at home with family.
So at my house I've built
a dedicated office that serves
both of these purposes.
I have a desk that
I use for research and for writing,
which is where I wrote the script for this video,
and then a reading area next to that,
and if I need to,
I can close the doors to that office
and be alone in that room.
But what if you don't have the room
for a dedicated isolated workspace?
Well, when space is limited,
you can either get creative,
maybe putting your desk underneath
a loft bed in your room
like my friend Alex does,
or you can turn to another resource
that you have at your disposal, time.
If you can't set up a permanent workspace,
you can get into the habit of setting up
a temporary one each day,
and you can even make this
part of your morning routine.
Have your shower,
make your breakfast,
make your coffee,
and then clear off a space on your kitchen table
or get out a folding table,
and in the case of the latter option,
you also have the flexibility
to experiment with where to put that folding table.
Now, my main tip here
would be to make sure you're not facing a TV,
especially if somebody else
in your family is watching that TV,
and in general,
don't face anything
that is going to distract you.
If you have to face a blank wall,
then do that.
But in any case,
you can experiment
and see what works best for you.
Then, once you've finished
your work for the day,
or you've hit a pre-set stopping time,
which would be a good thing to have,
you can reverse the routine
and put your gear away.
And this actually comes
with a really great benefit,
because it's a way of really committing
to the act of disengaging from work mode,
and going into relaxation mode,
and this, I can tell you from experience,
is quite hard to do when you live
and work in the exact same space.
Now, another question that
I've been getting pretty often
is how to deal with interruptions from family
and other people who live
in the same place that you do,
and honestly, the main answer to this question
is just good communication.
But there are some additional tweaks
you can make to your actual workspace
that can help here as well.
The first, is something
that you can steal from
the broadcasting industry,
which is the idea of an on-air sign.
Radio stations and studios often have these
light-up on air signs
outside of recording booths,
which light up when
somebody's recording or filming,
like I am right now,
and this lets other people know
that they should stop talking,
they should creep around
on tiptoes like little cat burglars,
and quite honestly,
that they should stop breathing as well,
No, preferably, but I'm guessing
your family's probably
not going to agree with that last one.
Anyway, you can set up
a similar sort of system
to let your family know implicitly
that you're trying to focus
and that they shouldn't interrupt you.
For example, my friend Martin
uses a hue light bulb
plugged into a regular desk lamp,
which when set to a specific color,
let's his fiancee know
that he's really focusing in
on a difficult problem
and shouldn't be interrupted
unless it's a really urgent issue.
Of course you could just keep things simple
and close the door to your workspace,
or pop on a pair of headphones
when you need to focus,
but the main thing here is that you
and your family should set
the system up together
so that they know how to respect it.
Next, let's talk about some tools
and other physical items
that can make a huge
improvement in your workspace.
Now, naturally you're gonna
wanna have any tools
that are specific to your work close at hand,
easily accessible, but there are
a few more general items
that I would like to bring
to your attention as well.
First, I have a whiteboard mounted to the wall
right next to my desk,
and every night
I look at to-do lists.
I've a Google Calendar,
and I write a list of everything
that I'm gonna do the next day,
preferably in the order
that I'm going to do it,
and I find that having this physical reminder
of my priorities for the day
right there in front of me
and easily glanced up at
is a great addition to my workspace.
I also have a second monitor,
which is hugely helpful
when I'm doing intensive research,
when I'm editing a video,
or really when I'm doing
anything that benefits
from extra screen real estate.
Now, you could of course go out
and buy an extra monitor,
which I have done many, many times,
but if you have an iPad
or an Android tablet lying around,
you can also use those.
On macOS there's a feature called sidebar
that's built in now that lets you use an iPad
as a second screen,
and if you're on Windows,
there are Android apps like Spacedeck
that let you do the exact
same thing with an Android tablet.
You might also consider
keeping some plants around,
like this dragon plant
that I keep next to my reading area
that I think really improves my workspace,
and keep some healthy snacks
and drinks around as well.
For snacks, I like to keep carrots and almonds,
and apples around,
and then for drinks
I have a fridge stocked with sparkling water,
and of course,
I have lots of coffee
and tea above that.
And finally, I recommend getting yourself
a good pair of headphones.
As much as I love to blast music over my speakers
while I'm working,
I think every good workspace
should have a quality pair of headphones in it.
Not only will this allow you to listen to
whatever you want without disturbing anyone else,
more importantly, they can provide some isolation
and help you stay focused.
Now, if you live in
a particularly noisy environment,
then you may want to look into
active noise canceling headphones.
These essentially listen
to the sounds in your environment
and then create opposite sound waves
that basically cancel both out
so that you hear, theoretically, nothing.
Now, in practice,
are they completely silent?
Well, not completely,
but I think you'd be surprised
at how much they really do help.
When I tried my first pair,
they were an absolute game changer,
and they enabled me to work in many places
that were previously way too loud.
Now, are they gonna
let you finish that TPS report
in the front row of a Metallica concert
Probably not, but they do help quite a lot.
So these are the Bose QC 35s.
I've had these for several years now,
and if they were to break,
I would probably go out
and buy the exact same pair once again.
I absolutely love these headphones,
but that said, these
and most noise canceling headphones
are actually quite pricey.
I think these were like 350 bucks
when I bought 'em.
They're about 260 now,
so they've come down quite a bit,
but for the most part,
active noise canceling is something
that's gonna cost you a bit of money,
except I recently saw
that Anker came out with a pair
of active noise canceling headphones
that go for about $60.
I haven't tried them myself,
but they do seem pretty well reviewed.
Now, if you wanna go even cheaper than that,
then you're gonna want to look
into a pair of normal headphones
that have a closed back design.
This is different from an open back design,
so these headphones,
which are the Audio-Technica ATH-M50,
have a closed back design,
which basically means
that they're pretty well sealed up.
They don't have active noise canceling,
but they do provide a good amount of isolation
when you're wearing them.
By contrast, open back headphones,
like these Sennheiser HD 650s,
which are honestly my favorite headphones.
They don't have very much material at all
other than this metal grate
separating your ears from the outside world,
which means that your poor,
naked, defenseless ears
are gonna hear everything
going on in your environment.
Now, open back headphones
do have their benefits.
They have this wide open, airy sound stage.
A lot of audio files really like,
but a tool for isolation they are not.
Anyway, if you're looking
for an inexpensive recommendation
for closed back headphones,
I'm gonna recommend the Audio-Technica-M20s,
which are essentially
the base model of these ones.
They're still great,
but they are quite a bit cheaper.
Now, what specifically
should you be listening to
in those headphones while you work?
Well, scientists working around the clock,
looking at lots of spreadsheets
and poring over data
have definitively proven
that the best source of productivity
enhancing audio in the world is My SoundCloud.
It is straight productivity enhancing for
Who wrote this?
- [Woman] You did.
- Oh, okay, barring that,
other than silence,
you have three main sources,
white noise, ambient noise,
and of course, music.
Now, for both white noise
and ambient noise,
I have a few recommendations
that you might wanna check out.
First, is a site called Ambient-Mixer
where people have uploaded custom mixes
that you can use to study with,
including lots of
common rooms for Hogwarts houses,
my favorite being the Ravenclaw one,
even though, as my girlfriend likes to tell me,
I'm a Slytherin,
and you can even open up the mixes
and change the levels of the sounds,
or even add in more sounds if you want.
There's another site called Noisli,
which is the one that
I used for most of college,
and that one also lets you mix
your own ambient soundscape with white noise,
pink noise, brown noise, babbling brooks,
rain, all that kind of stuff,
but unfortunately, after being
very much free forever,
they have recently went to a paid model,
where now there's a free plan that you can,
I think listen to for 90 minutes a day,
but after that you have to pay,
kind of a bummer.
Also, of course, there's YouTube.
Type in basically any
kind of ambient mix you want into YouTube
and you're gonna find
lots of 10-hour mixes
that you can listen to,
and when it comes to music,
YouTube is, again,
a great place to start,
not least of which because
for several years I have been building
my own ultimate study music
playlist here on YouTube,
which I'll have linked in
the description down below.
And if you happen to be
a Spotify or Apple Music user,
I have a playlist called Sunday Study,
which attempts to replicate that playlist,
so I'll link to that one as well,
and if you're a Spotify user in particular,
I also want wanna mention my friend Ali Abdaal
has his own excellent study music playlist,
which I will also link to,
and his is much longer than mine,
since he tends to put entire albums on it,
while I tend to curate individual songs.
So the digital environment that you build
is just as important as the physical one.
If your computer or your phone
are constantly distracting you
and pulling your attention away from the work
that you need to be doing,
well, then you're really
not gonna get much done.
But luckily, there are some
tweaks you can make to
that digital environment that are
just as effective as the ones we've made
to the physical one.
So, first and foremost,
I'm gonna recommend actually creating
a secondary work account on your computer,
and ideally, this account
shouldn't have access to Steam,
to Origin, to Epic,
man, there are a lot of game launchers now,
or really to any other program
that you find distracting.
You can also use a program like Freedom,
which will actively block distracting websites
and apps while you're working.
And your phone is also a potential distraction,
possibly more so,
which is why my main recommendation
would be to keep it away from your work area
while you're working.
Oh, it did hit something,
you were right.
- [Woman] I told you.
- Anyway, keep it away from
your main work area while you're working
and when you get it for a break,
you can check it then.
If you absolutely must
keep it near you while you're working,
at least try using an app like Forrest
which encourages you
not to touch your phone
for a specified period of time
that you set by letting
you grow a virtual tree.
If you don't leave the app
during that period,
you get the tree,
but if you do,
you kill your virtual tree
and then Mr. Beast will be sad.
Now, while we're talking
about your digital setup,
I do want to briefly mention internet speed.
If you're gonna be jumping
on lots of zoom calls with your team,
downloading lots of files
and generally trying to use the internet
to continue to earn a living,
then you wanna make sure
that your local network speeds
are as good as they can be.
Personally, if I can get a hardwired connection,
I will always take it.
You can do a lot to improve your Wi-Fi for sure,
but nothing beats an ethernet cable
running straight to your router.
That said, if you do need to use Wi-Fi,
at least try to position
your router in a central location
within your house or apartment.
That way the signal will have
the best chance of covering
your whole living space.
Now, aside from setting up
your environment in the right way,
you're also going to wanna
work on improving your habits
and your daily routines
If you wanna work effectively from home.
Optimizing these will help you get
a great start to your day
and help you stay more productive
as they automate a lot of what would
normally fall on your willpower.
And again, when you're working at home,
this is incredibly important
since every decision
is essentially yours to make.
Now, if you wanna learn
how to effectively build these habits
and these routines,
check out my habit building class on Skillshare.
This class will help
you to take your goals,
which might be a bit fuzzy
and loosely defined,
and turn them into concrete plans
that can be broken down
into actionable daily habits.
Once that's done,
the rest of the class is dedicated
to helping you stick
to those habits longterm,
and the best part is that
you can take this class
for free by being one of
the first 500 people
to sign up for Skillshare.
Using the link below.
Doing that will unlock
a two month free trial,
which is more than enough time
to take this class
since it runs just over an hour.
From there it will be up to you
to put what you've learned into action.
Boy will know that there is an area
where you can ask questions
and get feedback from both myself
and other students taking the class
and since this is Skillshare,
you'll also have access to my other class,
which is all about
Building your Productivity System
along with thousands of other classes
taught by expert teachers
and covering topics like video editing,
public speaking, interior design,
and lots, lots more.
So after taking my habits class,
I highly recommend checking out
something that interests you
and working to broaden your skillset,
which is something that I personally
I'm always trying to do.
Once again, be one of the first 500 people
to sign up with that link down below
to get a two month free trial
with unloaded access to Skillshare.
And as always, thank you so much
for watching this video.
Also, big thanks to all
my YouTube friends
who contributed footage for this video.
I'll have all of their channels,
linked with description down below.
So check those out.
And if you enjoyed this video,
definitely hit that thumbs up button
so the YouTube algorithm knows to
hopefully recommend my channel
a little bit more often.
Other than that,
you can get subscribed right there
if you haven't done so already,
check out a free copy of my book over here.
We don't have to check it out.
It's like a library.
You just get it
and you can download it.
But anyway, go right there
and you can get it.
Otherwise, I'll have a couple more videos
on screen that you can check out
by smashing your face into
your phone screen as always.
So do that.
And other than that,
go do whatever you want I'm not your dad.