Ben Halpern

Posted on Oct 5, 2019

What is key to a great home office setup?

#discuss #productivity

I'm moving places in a couple weeks and I'm primed to really create a great home office situation.

How should I go about doing this, any tips?

Latest comments (61)

Katie Adams • Dec 24 '19

Love the idea of a whole separate disk for work mode. Great notion. (Certainly something I would benefit from! 😅)

Tamas Fodor • Oct 9 '19

Always wear pants at home.

John Woodruff • Oct 8 '19 • Edited

Obviously everyone will have differing opinions on what is "required" for your home office. I will simply put down what I have, with the understanding that I absolutely love working from home in this environment.

Definitely agree with the comments about a clear separation. It needs to have a door that you can close. That way you "go to work" in the morning and "come home" in the evening. (or whenever) For me since I have a wife and son, it's easiest for me to have a lock on the door. If I'm in there working, I lock the door.

Comfortable sitting environment. This means quality desk and chair. I personally use the Autonomous SmartDesk Business Edition as well as their ErgoChair2. They're super affordable compared to other options for high quality comfortable working conditions.

Excellent monitor(s). I have one large 49 inch ultrawide monitor and it's incredible. I never feel like I don't have the room I need. It's not 4k, as much as I'd love it to be, but it's way more than I need.

Comfortable keyboard. I LOVE my CODE Mechanical Keyboard. Full size, clear switches, it's beautifully simplistic and super comfortable to type on.

Quality headphones. I don't want to hear my family and I don't want to subject them to constantly hearing my music muffled in my office. I use the Bose QC25's and they're amazing, I put them on and I'm able to easily get in the zone.

Also, I personally have two laptops. One is my work-issued laptop, and the other is my personal laptop. I recommend this for a number of reasons. First, you don't have to worry about whether it's okay to do personal projects on a work machine. Second, I don't have all my games, applications, etc., from my personal machine on my work machine. Those are temptations for me when I'm working, so I keep work stuff on my work machine. That's just what works well for me.

Natural light. This is important to my mental health. If I'm working in a place that's dark or poorly lit, I don't feel as good. Natural light is excellent at staving off those feelings.

Some fun things to make the space yours. For myself, I have various Legend of Zelda decorations around my office, as that's my favorite game franchise. Just make it yours.

Brett Stevenson • Oct 8 '19

Living in the Bay Area, I'm a little shocked by the number of people here with a separate room that they can use as a home office.

As someone living in a shared one-bedroom apartment, I would say that I've benefitted from a good pair of noise-canceling headphones, but one thing that I haven't seen mentioned here is good cable-management. I recently bought a desk with integrated cable-management and power-strip and it's made my confined workspace feel a lot more manageable.

Jean Kaplansky • Oct 7 '19

A room with a door!

Depending on your level of myopia and/or need to spread stuff out, one or more monitor that is also not the laptop screen.

Wireless headphones with a really good microphone. I use a pair of Corsair Void headphones. This way I have control of when or whether my dog gets to join conference calls or not.

Nice to have but not required: standing desk with anti-fatigue mat. You won’t use it as often as you think you will unless you literally cannot sit and never get hurt forcing you to sit.

Having an extra SSD on hand in the event of emergency is a good idea but not something you ever really think about til you need one.

I have bookshelves because I’m old. I don’t have plants because I have cats and dogs.

Robin Kretzschmar • Oct 6 '19

First of all: measure every centimeter of your space! You'd want to have a digital or physical note with all the measures when you shop for a table, a chair, decorative stuff and so on. It's really a time safer!

I recently bought an electric standing desk (Ikea "Bekant") and I love it!

Make sure you have enough power strips for your equipment because nothing sucks more than moving and noticing you don't have enough of them afterwards... Trust me on this one 😅

After that, follow the other tips in the comments here :)

simo • Oct 6 '19 • Edited

Definitely ergonomics. You are sacrificing a lot by staying alone at home, so why not make it a win?

Orhotpedic mattress. I know, it's not part of your office, but sleeping in a comfortable bed made a huge difference to my entire well being.
Ergonomic chair, you know, the one that can tilt naturally with your body. It have to have some sort of a weight in it, no idea how that works exactly.
Standup desk. While I can't say I stay up all day, nor do I have a specific schedule to get up, I've noticed that whenever I feel like getting up, it's very nice to have it. Also you can adjust your desk depending on your mood, the tilt example above, or in the cases when you feel like sitting up straight.
Monitor arm. I rarely move mine TBH, but it's nice to have it anyway. It's important to keep your neck straight. It also makes your table space cleaner.
Comfortable keyboard and mouse. I've noticed that having a keyboard with a numpad required my right hand on the mouse to be way to the right. Especially when you are a touch typist, and so that resulted in significant pain in my right shoulder over the years.
Soft padding for your wrists and elbows. Any thick enough and soft mat would do it. Rubbing your arms on hard surfaces over prolonged period can lead to serious nerve injuries.
120Hz monitor. I know that's highly controversial, most of the people think that's nonsense, but if you are sensitive to flickering it's a must have.
Ear muffs. Yep, I do have headphones, and earplugs too, but in all those other cases when you do need just silence, construction grade over the ear, ear muffs can help you get into the zone.
In case you are in close proximity to a window, you have to be able to control the amount of daylight to the point of complete blackout. Thick blinds can help you with that.

Everything else is a plus. I'm yet to experiment with good lighting BTW.

Michael Maitoza • Oct 12 '19

I really like your setup. I have a beautiful extra room which is similar to the room you are describing. I think I will work on it some and see what comes out of it.

Alan Solitar • Oct 6 '19

Sit standing desks are awesome and I would never work again without one. I love the mental clarity, improved health, and ability to switch between standing/sitting whenever I feel like it.

If anyone is interested about standing desks, feel free to check this out.

remotedevdaily.com/use-a-standing-...

Simon Massey • Oct 6 '19 • Edited

On my mac I put things into /Users/Shared which is usable by both accounts. You still have to set file permissions so shared git repos are writeable to both but it's not hard.

Michael Lustig - halfjew22@gmail.com • Oct 6 '19

Awesome, thanks for the tip.

Austin S. Hemmelgarn • Oct 9 '19

softwares with versions that may overlap

If you actually have to deal with software that you both need multiple different versions of and it doesn't support installs with multiple different versions on the same system, you've got bigger issues than work/home separation...