Dedicated Space

During my career I’ve worked in a number of different environments. Personally I find working in an office is best for me as it creates a delineation between work and personal life. When working remotely, it is important to find ways to create this delineation and to prevent yourself from overworking.

One of the best ways I’ve found to separate work and personal life is to have a dedicated space just for work; I do not use it unless I’m actively working, and I try to restrict my work hours to something similar to normal office hours.

# My Experience So Far

I wasn’t expecting to be working remotely at this time, but with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and a new role, I find myself in this situation. My current living arrangements aren’t really suitable for a dedicated space (my partner is studying so she’s already taken over the dining table, and we live in a studio apartment), but I’ve managed to sort out some space anyway. Unfortunately, finding this space has come at a cost; I’ve had to give up my hobby desk.

In order to maintain the separation between work and personal life, I’m quietly neglecting a couple of my hobbies that I used my desk for. This means that I don’t need to pack up my office equipment every night, and I don’t sit at the desk and end up working instead of doing something else.

As part of facilitating the dedicated space I maintain all of my personal computer us on a separate laptop. When I’m using my personal laptop I don’t use it at the work desk. I also don’t have any work data or services available on my personal laptop.

So far this is working quite well for me. If I am needed for anything work related then I move to the work desk, otherwise I don’t sit there.