Topic: Setting Up Your Office

Now that you’ve found a place for your office, you need to set up your office. So, this is what I like to do. I have two desks in my office, one for working on the computer, and one for working by hand.

I find that useful to have a second separate desk where I don’t put the computer when I just want to you know, write in a journal or draw pages by hand or take notes. Somehow I’m just less distracted at that desk.

On the desk with my computer, I like to have room for two screens. If you only have one screen it’s a massive productivity loss versus having two screens. I like to get two big screens that connect to my laptop, and a separate keyboard. The keyboard that I like is a Das keyboard, I’ll have a link for that in the notes for this episode.

Also in your office, you may want to consider getting a filing cabinet. It’s a little bit old school to keep paper files, but there are some things that are useful to have paper for and I learned this from David Allen in Getting Things Done … is even though it seems a little bit going overboard. I got a little label maker and print out the labels for those files and have them in a hanging file folder system. I find that just so much more helpful, even than writing them by hand. And then having some office supplies on hand in your office. Make a list of all the things that you need day today and then put in a bit of a Kanban system where when you pull one out, that’s your signal to go order another one.

Particularly for toner cartridges, you don’t want to run out of a toner cartridge the night before a client presentation.

So set up your office, in the notes for this episode there’s a checklist of things to consider as you get your office set up. That’s it for this episode.