How I use my personal environments
To get organised, I need to identify the spaces that I use regularly and consider the key activities and workflows in each. I will then be able to redesign these environments so that they make me more effective.
My key environments:
- Home office
- Workshop
- Garage
- Bedroom
- Kitchen
- Garden
- Loft
- Digital spaces (apps, files, servers & web services)
What activities should I be optimising for in each space?
Home office
- General work comms (email, slack, video calls)
- Deep work (long stints of uninterrupted flow)
- Strategy & planning work
- Design work (both digital & paper based)
- Programming
- Video & screen recording + editing
- Studying & learning
- Processing mail & digitising paperwork
- Managing home network
- Listening to and composing music
- Reading (on computer, tablet & books)
- Writing (on computer & paper)
- Charging batteries
- 3D printing
- Building small electronic projects
- Storing my library of books
- Storing office stationery
- Storing key equipment (camera, 3D printer, shredder, server cabinet etc)
- Backing up digital data
- Mobility exercises & stretches
- Accompanying pets
Workshop
- Woodworking
- Metalworking
- General DIY
- Tool storage
- Wood storage
- Consumable storage (glues, paints etc)
- Filming & documenting project builds
- Dust and off-cut collection
- Computer work e.g. (pulling up plans, accessing files on server)
- Listening to music
Garage
- Storing bikes & other sports gear
- Storing bike & sport accessories
- Storing car wash supplies
- Storing certain DIY supplies (paint etc)
Bedroom
- Reading
- Note-taking
- Sleeping
- Mobility stretches
- Getting dressed
- Washing (in en-suite)
Kitchen
- Meal planning & prep
- Eating
- Socialising
- Food storage
Garden
- Gardening
- Exercising
- Relaxing & socialising
- Garden tool storage
- Wheelie bin storage
- Eating, music & entertaining
Loft
- Storage of seasonal or occasional items
- Possible location for tertiary data backups
Digital environments
- Record management (digitisation)
- Personal files
- Business files
- Servers
- Applications
- Local environment organisation
- Back-up solutions
- SaaS services & access
- Password management
With this list defined, I’ll be able to focus on each area until each environment has been designed and optimised for these key activities.