In today’s episode of World Famous Program: Work From Home Woes, we will discuss the arrangement of our Work Desk.
I am pretty good at directions (I think). If someone asks me the directions, I can quickly take out my phone and open Google Maps and tell them. While working from home for 6 months now, directions have become quite a distraction. Where to direct attention and how for how long has been a particularly painful problem!
In which direction and where to keep my work desk? Which side has the right lighting for Zoom Calls? What and who is visible when the video call is on and how user-friendly or professionally tidy your room is? How much light is needed to not get blinded and not feel sleepy? What’s the level of craving for seeing the blue sky from the window? Don’t ask about working till late at night as that is inexplicable already.
Above are some valid questions we all must work together to find the right answers for.
From where I sit, I see Window just behind my work desk and there is sky visible (If I duck really low and elongate and extend my neck to a safe position from which it can return to normal). But there’s plenty of light so we are good that way. But then, there is a cupboard with a mirror door just behind me. This leads to a problem. If I am on a Video Call, the mirror reveals what all is open on my monitor. People peeking into your Monitor from your back was a universal problem everyone suffered in office. That could have got resolved by Work From Home but it has in fact stuck with me. I am not a fan of Zoom Backgrounds. Show us some real people!
So, I decided to get rid of the problem by using the most suitable and sensible way possible. Googling: Where to keep your desk for minimal distraction?
That opened a plethora of links and obviously Vastu and Feng-Shui put their hands on my shoulder and told me that the way I am living my life is all wrong. In fact criminal to face southeast. I shouldn’t have been facing a window and back should be facing a wall. The room should be in South West, otherwise North East but facing North or East. That East-West led to me waste 1 hour of my life trying to figure out the best possible way to arrange my desk so that everyone is happy. Turns out, you cannot please everyone. So, I quickly realized that googling such thing is a deep dive into nothingness and I should do what is best suitable: That is close google and let the things be.
That still left me with the same old problem of the mirror door showing everything.
When I asked the same from professional experts, they passed on this.
The solution was that I would keep the mirror door open and let people see what skeletons are there in my closet!
Video can only show what we want to be shown.
Therefore, video background before and after below:
Foreground we have already discussed here:
Featured Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash
