Monitor text/desk text
I started dating someone and have a spare room, so of course I evicted myself from there and gave it to them and now they work there on the days they’re visiting me. When they first got set up, they immediately said they required two monitors. And their laptop. So three monitors, then.
This was confusing at first. They are not the sort of person who Bloomberg Terminals their way into the cyber realm. More of a grass toucher. Still fine. You work how you work. Go hard or go home.
I have always had only one monitor attached to my server, but that thing can support six of them, so eventually it came about that there was a sale on good panels and I found a deal etc etc etc and now I have two monitors.
There is tremendous value to having two monitors. My work sprawls, it turns out, and the psychic twinge of having everything crammed onto one display is significantly alleviated when doing deep, complex work. For example, right now I’m overhauling a client’s documentation system, and having three windows open with the old, new, and outline is invaluable. Then you have Slack & todo in the side monitor, and can glance over to make sure no disasters have unfolded.
Most of you probably already know this, but I think you can also guess how often I talk to people about their monitor setup.
Anyway, now the desk is too crowded, and I can’t do anything there that does not explicitly involve a computer, so I have to get a second desk. This is how offices work. Your work routine slowly calcifies into something that you cannot disturb, and then you disturb the hell out of it and now you’re buying furniture.
The other desk is small, enough to fit a notepad and pens and nothing else. This is by design. For one, the viable space for a second desk is very small. For another, I want zero devices there, ever. Sometimes you very much need to log off and do a psychic heat death into a white sheet of paper and see what comes out.
I come from a lineage of design that would put post-it notes and printed comps up on the walls. There are often so many of these that sometimes we would get movable walls and stack them like cordwood on the side of the room. The idea was stated as tangibility, but one could also look at what we were doing at the time and interpret it as presence. No phones around. No emails chirping at you. Just a few humans starting at a wall full of stuff, chinscratchin’, wondering how to make the future.
I miss that tremendously and know there is still a way of doggedly clawing my way back there. Maybe it starts with a new desk.