Working from Home. My Setup and Workflow (geek alert)

I've had a number of folks tag or ask for some details on my home setup. To be honest, I've had a crappy setup as my office is 10 mins from home and never really considered extended worktime in the house.

Well COVID-19 hit and I found myself daily on calls with the same crappy setup till I couldn't stand it. So I decided to make a change and been experimenting with different equipment and setups. Over the last couple of days I feel like I have reached my optimal state. I thought I'd share.

The pic below provides the overview of the setup.

First, I have the space split into a WORK ZONE and a FUN ZONE for obvious reasons and will share more on the fun zonelater.

MONITOR SETUP (1, 2, 3)

Lots of debate on sitting or standing. You decide. I opted for a sitting configuration but less meetings so I can walk around, take breaks, etc.

The choice of monitor setup is critical. With so many choices, I opted for Two 32" curved gaming monitors instead of a single extra wide monitor mainly for the flexibility and price.

• I experimented a lot with the configuration but landed on what i feel is optimal setup of the Surface laptop screen being the middle monitor (2) in the Windows setup. This allows me to use Microsoft Teams as the central "productivity engine" running on my laptop screen and distribute apps to the LEFT and RIGHT on the larger monitors.

• My LEFT (1) monitor (1080p resolution for my aging eyes) splits the screen between Outlook and OneNote which allows me to glance at calendar, take notes, etc.
• My RIGHT (3) monitor (1440p Resolution for videos, apps) splits between SaaS apps like Dynamics365 and a Microsoft Edge Browser.

VIDEO CALLS SETUP (4, 5, 6, 7)

I have a good music setup in the fun zone for music composition, I am leveraging that for my video conference calls.

• Camera: Still using my Surface Laptop camera for now and I say for now because I prefer using the surface screen folded fully and that ends up pointing the camera straight up. Not good. Waiting till inventory on webcams refreshes and will pickup a Logitech or a Microsoft webcam.
• Microphone (4): I picked up the HyperX Quadcast and I LOVE IT. Podcast publishing might be next. Who knows!

• Tablet (5): With very little travel in the near future, my trusty Surface Go is a great companion for this setup to allow me to annotate with a Pen as needed and ideate during Teams Calls using the Microsoft Whiteboard app. If you haven't experienced Microsoft Whiteboard during Teams meetings, you are missing out.
• Headphones (6): For privacy, I use my Surface Headphones and a set of Apple Airpods Pro (as a backup based on charge status) to have more personal discussions.
• Speakers (7): I use a pair KRK Rokit6 Speakers. They are awesome when listening to music, making music or playing an instrument!

FURNITURE (9)

The desk is nothing magical, IKEA L shaped. Chair (9) is a gaming chair from Amazon.

FUNZONE (10)

The Fun Zone came first and is critical to the home setup. That's where I get a little distracted from work, play some music, make some music, practice scales and chords on calls. I won't got into great detail on the gear there but here's a peek.

Behringer Multichannel Mixer, Native Instruments Maschine 2, AKAI MPK mini, Microsoft Surface Book (loaded with Recording, Sound Editing, Imaging and video editing software), Marshall MG-100 HDFX Stack with 4 Speaker Cabinet, various guitars visit regularly (Gibson Les Paul SG making an appearance in the pic).

That's it. Hope you find this interesting. I enjoyed writing it.