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Working from Bed

nytimes.com

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Re: Working from Bed

#101

Post by michaelt »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #65
Toutouxc wrote: post #57

My WFH desk is in my bedroom because of space constraints. The fact that it's there doesn't bother me one bit and I have no desire to work from bed, curled around the 14" laptop I do my coding on, instead of the 43" 4K screen I have on the desk. But there are moments (once or twice a day) when I need to work on a specific piece of code that I don't mind center stage on the laptop display and I unplug everything and m…

>instead of the 43" 4K screen I have on the desk. I've been patiently waiting for a 32" 4k 144hz hdmi 2.1 ips display. I've noticed manufacturers seem to like making them in 27" (too small) and 43" (too big!) sizes. I have questions. How far away do you sit? How is a 43" screen for coding? Do you use a tiling window manager to allocate all that space? Do you use it for gaming at all? If so, how hard is it to keep tra…

Not the OP, but I use a 40" 4k screen.

> How far away do you sit?

70cm - closer than a TV, further than a smaller monitor.

I have it wall-mounted on an arm, so I can adjust the distance if I feel the need (which is rare)

Browsers and IDEs and terminals all let you scale the fonts, and I apply a modest amount of zoom.

> How is a 43" screen for coding?

I like my 40" screen, and I'd recommend one to anyone with the space. I chose a single large screen in preference to a multi-monitor setup.

I'd probably have liked it even more when I was a teen with great eyesight.

> Do you use a tiling window manager to allocate all that space?

No, but you will often want to use multiple windows - CAD software and things you might still fullscreen, but webpages and suchlike don't generally benefit from it.

When I got it, Ubuntu let you tile windows with Ctrl+Alt+Numpad - alas they dumped that feature, so now I have to resize my windows manually.

> Do you use it for gaming at all? If so, how hard is it to keep track of everything on the display?

Yes, but I generally play slow-paced games like Civilization.

Many games scale up the entire UI with screen resolution, and you can always move your chair back if you want the small-screen experience.

Obviously, if you want to play fast-paced games like FPSes in 4K you'll need a $$$ graphics card; initially, I had a "4K capable" GPUs and it would run spreadsheets and web browsing and 4K video no problem - but not a triple-A FPS.

> Do you find yourself having to turn your head to keep track of everything?

With my seating I move my eyes rather than my head.

Re: Working from Bed

#102

Post by jrockway »

wpm wrote: post #49
nickelcitymario wrote: post #35

I've wanted to work full-time from home for as long as I can remember. It took about a month in lockdown for me to realize I hated it. Turns out, my mental health is much better when I have an office to go to. 1h20 in commute (round-trip), no privacy, tons of distractions, and still I'm happier when I get to leave the house to go to work. I suspect it's mostly just a matter of getting out of the house. Those 4 walls…

Yeah working from home full time for me is like cheating on a diet. It sounds great at first, and for a few weeks you eat whatever you want and you don't notice much change. Then all your clothes stop fitting. Working from bed is like eating ice cream for breakfast. Sounds great, nice maybe once as a treat, then becomes horrible. I need structure, routine, and not having to go into work makes enforcing that routine s…

I think you have to make a routine, rather than hoping one is provided for you. I am not a routine person, but for me showering, opening up Slack, and switching Chrome profiles is how I transition from "home" to "work". I don't do "home" things during work hours, and I don't do "work" things during "home" hours. Even though I'm at the same desk. For me, it works as well as commuting did, without 30 minutes of being frustrated at the subway.

(I admit that I do do some "home" things at work, like laundry. That mostly involves turning on the machine and tending to it in an hour, so not a big time commitment but nice to get done during the day.)

Re: Working from Bed

#103

Post by fastball »

Raphmedia wrote: post #96
kaybe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oohh look at these people with more than one room! (Ok it's valid for those.. but I'm still feeling a bit salty.)

I believe that even working on a small desk next to your bed would be better than working directly from the bed.

I really don't think we have enough evidence to backup this assertion.

Re: Working from Bed

#104

Post by jrockway »

geocrasher wrote: post #24

I've been WFH full time since 2011. I could not even finish this article. Anyone who thinks that working from bed is good in any way, shape, or form, is deluding themselves. It's an ergonomic nightmare that is unsustainable. It's lack of separation between Life and Work. It's everything WFH should NOT be. In a year, there will be another article that says "Working from Bed: Maybe not so much"

I think it must depend on what kind of work people do. I really have no idea what non-engineering jobs are like, but I feel like they probably require less screen real-estate and text entry, and so don't demand the same ergonomics that writing software (or doing CAD modeling, etc.) requires.

I can tell you that I personally hate being away from my desktop. I like the feeling of the office chair, I like my ergonomic keyboard, I like having a ton of monitors to organize my triple-wide Emacs window, some terminals, some browsers for documentation, Slack, Discord, a music player, etc. But... other people probably don't do as much I/O with their computer, and can probably lay in bed and get stuff done.

When I worked at Google I always saw people sitting on bouncy balls typing away on their laptops, and I guess they got stuff done doing that, so I just chalk it up as "I don't personally understand it". I like my desk, but I see no reason to require people to sit at desks all day if they'd prefer to be in bed. If it doesn't work for them, they'll probably stop doing it.

Re: Working from Bed

#105

Post by fastball »

tartoran wrote: post #29
wasdfff wrote: post #3

Speaking as someone who goes from bed to couch to bed during this pandemic due to a lack of desk space in my crampt apartment, I would murder someone if it meant I could claim their chair and desk and have actual lumbar support again.

Lumbar support is a false friend. I used to rely on this until I learned proper posture and did exercises to strenghten and relearn to use skeletal musculature correctly. I need not rest my back on anything now and my general health couldn’t be better. Unless you had a recent surgery and the body is weakened or you have a serious condition (torn discs, etc) I’d advise to try to ditch all these crutches which end up w…

Link?

Re: Working from Bed

#106

Post by itsnot2020 »

I've worked from home pretty much my entire career (over 20 years now, and am fortunate to have a dedicated office) and the last thing I ever want to do is work from bed.

I need some distance between my bedroom and office both physically and mentally.

Re: Working from Bed

#107

Post by chapium »

eric_b wrote: post #42

Working from bed is great? What? Who at the NYT thought this was worth publishing? This is a great way to increase mental health issues, decrease physical health and hygiene and generally make everything worse. Maybe in the future when morbidly obese humans float around in hover beds and purchase things only from Buy-N-Large this will be "great" - but this reeks of a strange "pro COVID lockdown" narrative I've been s…

They don't have to write the way you want. Its easy to write positively about tools one feels are beneficial.

Re: Working from Bed

#108

Post by youerbt »

andybak wrote: post #74
nickelcitymario wrote: post #35

I've wanted to work full-time from home for as long as I can remember. It took about a month in lockdown for me to realize I hated it. Turns out, my mental health is much better when I have an office to go to. 1h20 in commute (round-trip), no privacy, tons of distractions, and still I'm happier when I get to leave the house to go to work. I suspect it's mostly just a matter of getting out of the house. Those 4 walls…

And I've found the opposite. I'm genuinely not being antagonistic - I just think it's important to get a diversity of voices out there on this topic lest people feel that there's only one "truth".

It's also worth pointing out that working from home not equals working from home during lockdown.

Re: Working from Bed

#109

Post by Toutouxc »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #65
Toutouxc wrote: post #57

My WFH desk is in my bedroom because of space constraints. The fact that it's there doesn't bother me one bit and I have no desire to work from bed, curled around the 14" laptop I do my coding on, instead of the 43" 4K screen I have on the desk. But there are moments (once or twice a day) when I need to work on a specific piece of code that I don't mind center stage on the laptop display and I unplug everything and m…

>instead of the 43" 4K screen I have on the desk. I've been patiently waiting for a 32" 4k 144hz hdmi 2.1 ips display. I've noticed manufacturers seem to like making them in 27" (too small) and 43" (too big!) sizes. I have questions. How far away do you sit? How is a 43" screen for coding? Do you use a tiling window manager to allocate all that space? Do you use it for gaming at all? If so, how hard is it to keep tra…

This is a monitor that I took from the office where I have a larger desk that allows me to sit around 100 cm from it. ATM it's around 75 cm from my eyes and it's a little too close.

I don't use scaling, so it's basically like having four 21.5" FullHD panels, and the distance isn't that problematic because of the pixel density, but mainly because of the fact that it occupies my whole visual field and it feels a bit weird.

I have it hooked to a vanilla Ubuntu machine with GNOME, nothing special. I usually put RubyMine (I do Ruby on Rails) with all the bells and whistles and sidebars and toolbars on the left side of the screen, full height, which gives me a FullHD code editor and a FullHD debugger window, and on the left side I have a browser window with a terminal or a JS console. And some Spotify peeking behind it or something. This gets me through the whole day, I don't need any i3-style black magic to handle my 5 windows.

The screen has been sitting in the office for quite a while. People tried it for a bit and went back to their 3X" 4K panels, but I fell in love with it immediately.

Actually the "having to turn your head" is the most interesting aspect. Yes, I do have to turn my head a lot. I have to turn my head and sometimes move my whole body when I need to see some detail somewhere and I like that about this setup. Not sure whether it's ergonomic or healthy but I like that I can physically move myself further left or right and focus on one part of the screen.

Unfortunately, I use a PS4 for gaming and my laptops are an iGPU-equipped Dell and a M1 Macbook Air, so 3D gaming in 4K is out of the question.

Re: Working from Bed

#110

Post by amyjess »

I have absolutely taken conference calls in bed, especially when it's really cold in the morning. I can just snuggle up under the covers and stay warm while discussing project status.
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