The little things

Some people have to create the perfect environment before they can get any work done. They have to have the perfect workshop, or just the right oak desk, or exactly the right applications installed on their computer. Other people can work however or whenever, give them a folding table two sheets of scrap paper and a 49 cent ball point pen and they'll draft the Declaration of Independence. I, along with I think most other people, are somewhere in between. I think most people at least feel more productive when they're comfortable with their workspace. And obviously not having to waste time looking for the right tool or not having the right tool and making do with something less efficient are clear advantages of having a good working environment, but often it goes beyond that...

For the last month I've had an item on my to do list "Move Desk", and it's something of a testament to my self control that it took me this long to get to it. I mean obviously I can get work done when my desk is not in the optimal place. And actually it wasn't moving my desk, it was moving the wing of the desk. See I have an "L" shaped desk. One arm of the "L" has a keyboard tray and a cradle for the computer, the other arm of the "L" just has a drawer. So obviously most of the surface area of the first arm is taken up by my monitor, and the other arm ends up being my work area where I can spread out documents, make notes etc. Well initially the work area arm was on my left, but the way the desk was set up I was vulnerable to ambush (i.e. my back was to the door.) So I moved my desk so that I was no longer vulnerable to ambush, but as a result I had to switch the work area arm to the right side.

This seems like no big deal, but because the keyboard tray is on the left side of the computer arm, and the cradle is on the right side suddenly from where I sit in front of the keyboard ended up being an additional foot away from the work area arm. So now instead of being able to just glance to my left I had to PHYSICALLY SCOOT MY CHAIR over to the other arm to look at something. The difference may sound trivial, but I can assure you that it's not. In any case today I finally got around to moving the arm back to my left side (while preserving my defensive position) and it's like I've been reborn... Although the act of moving it and crawling around on the floor to bolt it back together and redo the cables gave me a really bad headache... I'm going to say that I'm still a little sick rather than that that small amount of physical effort wiped me out.

I really need to start exercising