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Rethinking the office – Less is more

New home-office

Last time I talked about home-office, I gave some tips on how to design yours from scratch. Eight months later, I felt the need to change a few of those comments, all of them related to gadgets and gear. As you can see on the photo above, I removed a lot of stuff. And there are a few reasons for that.

The first thing you’ll notice is the missing monitors. Although 3 monitors minimize window-switching, if they aren’t big enough, they will distract you. In my case, I had the 21.5” iMac plus two 23” Samsung P2370s. The screens are too small so that there’s often a pop-up or notification in my field of view distracting me. After some tests, I realized that the minimum monitor size to avoid this is 27”, 30” being the best. Since I don’t have an office as big as Bill Gates’, I decided to switch back to a single monitor. And, besides, OS X Lion helps concentration with the full-screen mode for apps.

This had good consequences which resonate well with my design principles cited in the previous article. First, the office is better lit, as there’s no obstruction at all in front of the windows now. Second, there’s plenty of room on the desk — I could have Christmas supper on it now. Third, much less noise. As you may have noticed, the PC is gone, so I only have the iMac on the desk, which is pretty much noiseless. Plus, now that I have more space, I’ll get a LED reading lamp for the desk and keep the lights off and just turn them on when I really need them. This eliminates the annoying 60Hz noise from the fluorescent lamps. And last, much less energy consumption: it dropped from around 500W to a mere 120-130W. This means my UPS batteries last much longer now, which is good for productivity in emergencies.

One good thing about getting rid of the PC is that reduces IT overhead. I simply hate updating computers and gadgets and one less to worry about is a big win. Actually, two less, because I got rid of my Linux VM with it. On the Mac, I have everything done for me — upgrades, backups, etc — while I sleep, so I don’t have to waste time on such things.

I’m also getting rid of all my real books, except those I can’t find a digital version. Keeping my stuff all in digital format gives me more mobility, which is great. Of course, I have countless backups of everything in many different physical locations, just in case. After this is done, I’ll have to find another use for my bookshelf (or get rid of it completely).

And one last thing: since I’m very picky, I also decided to get rid of another wire in the office. I got a Jawbone HD bluetooth unit for conference calls and ditched the Sennheiser earbuds.

So that’s it. Lesson learned here: less is more.

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