Things I've quit doing at my desk
justinjackson.ca
Things I've quit doing at my desk
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#2I would add "Eating" to the list.
I eat at my desk all the time, and I really need to stop. When I eat at my desk, I'm generally eating things that aren't that healthy to begin with, snacking unnecessarily, and/or eating too quickly, and doing it in some misguided notion that I'm able to work and eat at the same time. I'm not actually productive at times like that, it just lets me deal with some illogical guilt I feel when I get up to go eat at a table with other people, or out by myself in the park near the office.
When I get up and go to lunch instead of eating at my desk, I'm taking a real break, I'm socializing, or taking time to think.
I gotta stop eating at my desk.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#3#1 (thinking elsewhere, especially while taking a walk) is definitely true for me, but it does require being in a setting where you're allowed to leave the office for a few hours in the middle of the day to go for a walk in a nearby park. In academia or at your own startup, probably not a problem, but many companies aren't very accommodating of people leaving the office for hours at a time.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#4I disagree about the socializing part, in part because so much of our socializing is driven through the same mechanism we might otherwise do work at. Perhaps Justin might have two desks, one that is the communication/socializing desk and one that is the execution/work desk.
Of course a number of people would love to do that where the TV ends up the display for your socializing function.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#5I would add "Eating" to the list. I eat at my desk all the time, and I really need to stop. When I eat at my desk, I'm generally eating things that aren't that healthy to begin with, snacking unnecessarily, and/or eating too quickly, and doing it in some misguided notion that I'm able to work and eat at the same time. I'm not actually productive at times like that, it just lets me deal with some illogical guilt I fee…
agreed. i've forced myself to eat lunche outside every day even if there is no one to go with. I get lunch and eat it somewhere on a bench while catching up on hacker news (things i used to do at my workstation) etc. i find that just having a HN tab open in my browser is distracting enough so i totally eliminated it.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#6Has anyone else switched to a standing desk setup? Do you like it?
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#7Ad procrastinating: I remember someone (Paul Graham?) reporting that he configured a separate machine for procrastination-inducing activities so as to avoid the "just quickly check my feed while this is compiling" syndrome.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#8Ad procrastinating: I remember someone (Paul Graham?) reporting that he configured a separate machine for procrastination-inducing activities so as to avoid the "just quickly check my feed while this is compiling" syndrome.
It was Paul Graham. He later noted that it didn't really work.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#9#1 (thinking elsewhere, especially while taking a walk) is definitely true for me, but it does require being in a setting where you're allowed to leave the office for a few hours in the middle of the day to go for a walk in a nearby park. In academia or at your own startup, probably not a problem, but many companies aren't very accommodating of people leaving the office for hours at a time.
I find that too - much of my best thinking in the past has come to me during the walk to the office or back home again. I once took to carrying a dictation machine so I could capture these thoughts because I used to find that the process of arriving at the office, making a coffee, booting up and logging on used to distract me and I'd forget what I'd thought of while walking.
My theory about thinking and walking is that it gets the blood flowing round the brain more than just sitting at a desk does. I think that was the thinking behind having table tennis tables in offices as well, to get the blood moving around. There's also something about the action of walking that seems to let the mind wander off as well though...
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#10I disagree about the socializing part, in part because so much of our socializing is driven through the same mechanism we might otherwise do work at. Perhaps Justin might have two desks, one that is the communication/socializing desk and one that is the execution/work desk. Of course a number of people would love to do that where the TV ends up the display for your socializing function.
I think it is good to clearly separate working and socializing activities. Working in an open work space where anyone can socialize with you at any time can be very distracting for work that requires you to focus. In my opinion having a private office and separate watercooler/coffee/socializing space would be ideal.
That said, having that separate desk to indicate that you're working on something that is not so susceptible to distraction might be enough.