Building my environment

I spend a significant amount of time in my home office, which needs to support various aspects of my life. The more my environment enhances my mental well-being, the better I can stay focused, organized, and productive. This article discusses that home office setup, in which I will cover various aspects of how I create my environment and make it serve me as best I can. We will discuss the topics of using sound, lights (and the lack thereof), comfort, distractions and finalizing ease of use. The article aims to inspire readers to explore what works best for their own environments.

Sounds

My whole life i have known that I need background noise. Whether I am sleeping and require a white noise machine, or whether I am working and trying to focus on the task at hand. I have always needed something to set the tonal mood and fill the empty space left by silence.

Knowing this, I’ve invested in my sound systems to ensure I get the most out of what they have to offer.

PC

On my computer setup, I have a pair of AudioEngine’s A2+ speakers, hooked up via USB a switcher that allows me to flip them between my personal computer and work computers. These have some of the best sound I’ve ever heard on a PC. They are very rich in tone and the overall quality is outstanding.

I’ve supplemented these speakers with the AudioEngine S8 subwoofer. This adds a powerful punch to the speakers and really fills out the frequencies. While the A2’s already have some great low-end for their size, the S8 just turns the overall speaker system into a powerhouse of sound. These speakers have a built in USB input from your computer, bluetooth, analog plug, and so much more! I can’t recommend these enough to everyone!

I have music playing on my computer pretty much every second that I am in front of it. Be it during the work day, gaming time, leisure time, or when in deep focus modes of creative work or play. I live with music and always have it playing on just about any device I can throughout my day time. I have a mixer software on my computer that allows me to adjust the volume level of different applications and I can control these levels using physical controls on my Stream Deck.

This makes for a very convenient and easy to use setup during work meetings, where I can still have my music playing but unheard by others, as I keep my microphone off-axis to my speakers to help reject the sound waves.

TV

I watch a lot of TV and Movies. I wouldn’t call myself an audiophile by any means, but I certainly do care about getting rich, full and powerful sound out of my film and tv shows.

My office isn’t very large, so I didn’t need a ridiculously huge system to make a big audio impact. I have a Samsung soundbar as my primary audio source. This provides a center channel, left, right, as well as Dolby Atmos upward firing speakers. I believe I bought this open box or with some kind of great special that made the price really good for what it is. Overall I’'m extremely satisfied with it.

To fill out the rest of the sound, I have a wireless subwoofer and the optional package that adds rear left and right channels wirelessly. These are both fantastic in that I don’t have to run any extra cables, let alone a 20ft cable from the TV to the rear of my office!

I frequently use my TV as an audio source during the work day as background music if I am sitting on my couch as opposed to using my standing desk. This also can often provider visuals on the TV during the music that helps with temporary stimulation when I need a short break.

DJ Booth

I began DJing around the age of 14 or 15 year olds. I had a pair of really poor quality Numark’s that barely worked for what they were intended to do. Over the almost three decades I’ve continued to DJ, my at home setups have changed greatly. Currently, I keep it a little more in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to speakers. I have a pair of Pioneer VM-70 monitors. These put out enough low end to satisfy my DJ needs, while also providing crisp highs and solid sound.

Because I always value a sub woofer, but I don’t always want to splurge for one on every sound system, I’m actually leveraging my PC speakers and their subwoofer as an extra set of speakers. This is dual purposed, it helps fill out the low end as those frequencies are omni directional and having the woofer on the other side of the room means that I get a bit more sound due to wave lengths. This also serves in allowing me to have my DJ music playing at my computer if I want to have some music coming from my decks but still be working at my desk.

Overall, it’s a fantastic configuration! During both day time hours and evening, I will have music playing that is either from past mixes I have created, or upcoming mixes that I am still building and previewing music for.

Visuals

My home office, or what started as simply my “computer room”, has always been a very dark place. I have loathed overhead lighting and usually the very first thing I do is tack up a heavy blanket over the window and black out all natural light.

Over time I’ve learned that I actually benefit greatly from natural light, and having a balance of dark along with ambience is a batter approach.

Ambient Light

I have over 15 smart lights in my office. Ranging from LED strips, light bars, curtain lights, and standard lamp bulbs. Each one is programmed to a different color and located in a key spot throughout my office. This could be under my desk, behind my TV, in the corner of a room, or behind my monitors. Each one serves a key purpose to throw colored lighting onto my white walls. This allows my office to remain dark, while still having plenty of light for navigating around and still seeing objects from reflected lighting.

One of the coolest features I’ve found with this smart lighting, is the ability to influence my mind through my environment. I have certain colors that I use during working hours that are different than my personal hours. This is a visual indicator to my brain that we are “in work mode”. I used to be able to have two separate desks in my office on different walls. This provided a clear message to myself that one was for work and one was for play. Now that I have both combined into a single desk, I use this lighting to tell my brain what mode we are in.

Monitor Light Bar

One of the single greatest investments I made in the last decade was in a overhead light bar for my monitor. This is a small LED bar that sits on my monitor and throws light onto my keyboard and desk space. No single purchase has been as critical to my overall setup as this light bar. I’ve since purchased one for home and my actual in-office desk because I cannot operate without one.

This simple tool allows you to keep the overall lighting of your room very dark, but still provide your eyes ample white lighting for your keyboard and desk. These light bars vary greatly in price, but many will include the ability to change the warmth of the light coloring and some even have an automatic mode that will detect your ambient lighting and adjust the settings for you.

I find this is the best tool to balance the light and dark in my office space. It helps whether it is the middle of the night or the bright afternoon.

Dimmable Lights

When I first built my home office, they installer had put in regular overhead lights. //Almost immediately I swapped these for dimmable lights. This has been another huge benefit in balancing the light vs dark. I can easily turn on the lights to their lowest dimmable setting when I just need a little boost to the room light.

Blackout Curtains

Still, twenty years later and I am still blacking out as much natural light as possible. I find this is a basic starting point for all of my offices. However, I have also discovered that zero natural light is NOT beneficial for me. I do need some amount that I can control. So while I have usually just blacked out every window, in my current office that I had custom built, I’ve had a few small windows installed up at the roof line which allows natural light but also makes it easy to black them out if needed (depending on the season).

Comfort

Since I am not always at my standing desk, I also have a small couch that I can relax on. I find this beneficial when I need to sit and I want a super comfy spot to do so. It’s great for focus work when I want to curl up cross-legged with a blanket and really settle in.

It also serves a purpose of providing me somewhere to take power naps during my day. This is something I learned a number of years ago that has continued to be incredibly beneficial. Sometimes you just need 20 or 40 minutes of actual rest to truly energize for the rest of a day. This is even more important when you have small children and can’t just go inside.

Distractions

My office serves both as a place of work and as a place of play. Because of my ADHD distractions are a HUGE problem for me. I combat this by using a trick from the Atomic Habits book. Building a barrier. By making a negative habit slightly more difficult to achieve, I can more easily ignore the habit and keep focused on the positive.

For example, my personal computer and work computer share a keyboard, mouse and monitor. This forces me to switch between them and raises the barrier to easily being distracted by Discord and other apps on my personal system.

I have my AppleTV on a timer that powers it off during work hours and instead I can use my phone to Airplay to the TV itself. Why is this a barrier? All of my media apps are on my AppleTV, the actual TV has no accounts configured and is therefore not a distraction for me (Netflix, YouTube, etc). But I can still stream my Apple Music to my TV and speakers if I am on the couch.

Ease of Use

I learned a long time ago, even before my ADHD diagnosis, that if something is out of sight it is also out of mind. This means, if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately this means that anything and everything I might need, should be visible and easily accessible to me. Primarily this means lots of cubbies, shelves, drawers, etc. Easily accessible places that each contain only certain items I need and which I know their location at all times.

Conclusion

This article was encouraged by a few different people in my life. They were very aware of my office and how I’ve designed and built it to serve my needs. The content of this article may not serve you, but I hope it might be a bit of inspiration for you to explore what does work for you.

Should you have any questions or feedback, leave a comment!