My workspace makeover, part 2: Layout

I'm reviving an old series of posts that I had planned, since this is really a continuation of the same theme: making over my workspace in order to encourage greater productivity.

In the first post, I wrote about my new desk chair.  I was having a hard time sitting at my desk for long periods of time, and suspected that part of it was the chair I was using, a vintage wooden chair.  It was more comfortable than you'd think, but just not enough to justify sitting in it for long stretches.

The new desk chair is comfortable, but it wasn't working to keep me in my desk as much as I wanted.  I was still taking my laptop into the living room and working there instead.  I started thinking maybe I needed a different desk — this one has been a challenge because the footwell is small (it's an older desk) and many chairs don't fit underneath.  My office chair doesn't, so I'm still in a position where it's far too easy to hunch forward, which is fatiguing.

I was thinking about getting a secretary desk or a piano desk (I like antiques), because either style would have a writing surface that would either fold down or pull out, coming out over my lap so that I could lean back in my chair.  I even found a gorgeous Eastlake secretary desk that I might have walked out with that very day, had the price tag not given me pause.

While I was thinking about the Eastlake desk, I decided to go ahead and rearrange my office space.  My husband and I share the second bedroom in our house — he has a secretary desk in one corner, and I had my desk against the front window.  However, it occurred to me that this might have had a hand in causing my problem, since the bright window behind my screen made it hard to see unless I leaned forward.

Here is my old workspace:



Note the old armchair rocker in the corner.  As I mentioned in this post, about being comfortable when I write, I used to sit in this rocker to work.  It's extremely comfortable, but my older cat has taken it over since we got the kitten last summer.  I never had the heart to move her so I could work there, but last week I decided to get rid of the rocker and put my workspace in that corner, facing the adjacent wall.  I also exchanged my floor lamp with the one in the living room, which will give more direct light.  The printer is on nesting tables on the far side of the desk, in front of the lamp, and instead of the rocker, I moved in a Victorian parlor chair that my mom gave me recently.

Here is the result:



Yesterday was the first day I sat at my desk for a lot of the day since moving it here.  I'm able to get my chair partly under the desk, so I can pull my laptop forward, and with a wrist rest (ordered from Etsy), I should be fairly comfortable sitting back to work.  I still catch myself leaning forward occasionally, but overall I don't seem to have as much of that impulse with a wall behind my screen instead of a window.

I'm hoping this will be another step toward improving my productivity.  If so, it seems I will be able to keep my current desk, which makes me happy because I really do like it! 

Back from vacation

I'm just back from a stay-at-home vacation, during which I wasn't checking email or even getting on the computer much at all.  Michael had taken last week off with the intention of us going to Durango, as we did last summer, but we decided at the last minute to stay home.  Instead, we did a lot of things around the house that we'd been planning on doing, including rearranging and reorganizing the office to make it easier for me to work.  I'll blog on that later this week (with pictures).

I also made a pretty major decision about my career...  More on that later, as well.

Coming back from vacation is always so hard for me, but I think in many ways it's harder when I've taken time off and stayed home.  The reason (I think) is that I've changed my routines, but since I associate the vacation routines with home, it makes it harder to get back into the mindset of my old, work-related home routines.  For instance, I was staying up late and getting up late all week last week, and that particular habit is especially hard for me to break.

But overall, the break was refreshing.  I feel rested mentally, and I love my new workspace.  Combined with the decision I made during the week, I feel better about work going forward!

Is comfort the key to productivity?

I recently started getting The Writer on my Nook. At $3.50 a month, and a lot of interesting articles, it seemed like a worthwhile expense.  Besides, I enjoy the electronic issue so much more than I ever liked magazines!

Anyway, one of the articles that I found interesting in the July 2011 issue was "He's No Slouch," by Daniel Asa Rose, about how much more productive he is when he is comfortable.  An excerpt:

Something miraculous happened when I took my laptop to bed... The writing flowed. As my breathing relaxed and deepened, something unlocked inside me...

(I tried to find the article on the website, but apparently they don't make their articles available there to non-subscribers, so you'll have to check it out at the newsstand if you are interested in reading the full article.)

Reading this article got me to thinking.  I've been bemoaning my lack of productivity for a year or more.  Is it possible that this period of unproductivness might coincide with giving up my favorite writing spot?  About a year ago, when we got our youngest cat, Ivan, Cleo (my fat female cat) started hanging out in the rocker next to my desk.  It was a good place for her: near to me while I worked, easily defensible if Ivan tried to harass her (which he does, frequently, even now).

Unfortunately, it was a good place for me, too, before she took it over.  I estimate I used to spend about half my day writing in my rocker.  I'm not a big fan of writing at my desk — a couple of hours is about all I get before I start getting so uncomfortable I can't stand it anymore.  I've always known that I write better if I change my location (and position) frequently: desk, rocker, couch, bed, coffee shop.  When I'm up late working and I want to power through some work so that I can get to bed, I usually choose either my rocker or the couch, knowing that I won't be able to concentrate as well if I'm at my desk.

Although I have since gotten a more comfortable desk chair and a foot rest to go beneath my desk, I still am most comfortable when my laptop is on my lap.  And unfortunately, the couch isn't comfortable enough to contain me for long.  Right now, in fact, my lower back is starting to get a bit achy, so I've shifted my weight onto one hip, propped my laptop on one leg and my elbow on a pillow, and put my other foot on the couch with my knee sticking straight up in the air.  Yes, it's comfortable, and yes, I can work this way.

But I want my rocker back.

The only question is...  Do I want it back badly enough to deny this face?

A freelance writer's occupational hazard

I've mentioned on my blog before that I have the occasional problem with repetitive strain injury in my wrists.  I haven't had it happen since around Christmas 2008, when I caused myself some major wrist pain by spray painting a kiddie table as a Christmas gift for my nephews.  Occasionally I'll feel the initial twinges of a problem, but I'm usually able to prevent any significant problems by reminding myself to move around, stretch, and change my position a little more often.

Perhaps a week ago, I started noticing some major twinges in my left wrist.  I thought it was due to the abrupt change in our weather — I was also feeling some soreness in the knee I injured falling off my horse a little over a year ago, and I assumed all the rain was making past injuries achy again.

The ache in my knee went away, though, and the pain in my wrist only spread up into my elbow.  Oops.

It's my left elbow, which has been giving me problems off and on for years.  It started bothering me in college, when I would rest my left elbow on the desk while I browsed the Internet, sometimes for hours.  It actually started messing with my nerves or something, because I would get pain and numbness radiating down into my hand sometimes.

I had to stop myself from resting my elbow on the desk, but lately I've been doing it again.  I've also been frequently propping my chin on my left hand or playing with my hair (a bad habit of mine) while I read, which means that my elbow is frequently bent.  I think that may have something to do with the current pain I am experiencing in my left wrist and elbow — I must be pinching the nerves.

When I first started freelancing full-time, I developed my worst case of repetitive strain injury from a day of using the mouse for hours and hours, looking for markets and editing some photos for an article I was writing.  The pain afterward lasted for days, if not weeks, and radiated from my wrists all the way up into my shoulders.  It took a lot of ibuprofen and heating pads to get through that — I found that using a heating pad on my wrists while I typed during the day, and keeping one on my shoulder or upper arm in the evening, helped keep me from making anything worse, and helped me be better rested when I began work the next morning.

So that's the approach I'm taking now.  Yesterday I had to take ibuprofen several times, so today I broke out the heating pad.  I've spent the day working on the couch, with my laptop on my lap (a more comfortable angle for my arm), a pillow under my forearm, and the heating pad wrapped around my elbow.

What about you?  Do you have any funny little aches and pains that plague you sometimes, or do you remind yourself to get up and move around regularly to avoid them?  We all have our favorite remedies for recurring injuries or aches — what are yours?

Is a freelance writer an entrepreneur?

Recently I reviewed a book on Livre du Jour called The Entrepreneur Equation.  As a freelance writer, I often like to read books on business and entrepreneurship, but I found this one a little disappointing.  Early on in the book, she says that one-person businesses are just job-businesses, and aren't really worth pursuing, because you spend all that time (marketing, administration, etc.) to build a business that doesn't have any value and cannot be sold, since it revolves around you.  She says you'd be better off just getting a regular job doing what you want to do.

The point of the book is to help you decide whether you really should start your own business, and for the most part I like the message.  For instance, she points out the fallacies that are behind most people's motivations to start their own business (and why they don't work out): they want to earn their living doing what they love (running a business involves spending a lot of time on marketing and other tasks), they want more free time (you usually have to work even more in order to build a successful business), and they want to be their own boss (as a business owner, your customers or clients are your bosses, and can be far more demanding than any "real" boss you've ever had).  I agree with all this stuff.  Going into business for yourself is hard work, and takes a certain kind of person to succeed at it.

However, I just don't agree with what she says about one-person businesses.  First of all, she is overlooking the fact that there may not be a job available as an alternative.  For instance, I don't believe there are a lot of companies hiring novel writers.  As another example, I knew an artist who used to work at a tile company, painting tiles, but that wasn't really a long-term career choice for her, so she went solo.  There wasn't really any other option if she wanted to pursue a career as an artist, except going into business for herself.  Even for copywriters and content writers like myself, there are very few jobs, yet there is plenty of opportunity to pursue a career if you work as a freelancer or a contractor.

So then we move on to the claim that it's not worth spending the time on marketing etc. if you're not creating a business with value to it, which you can sell further on down the road.  First of all, it should be pretty obvious, but still bears mentioning that most freelancers have no intention of selling their business — they are creating a career for themselves, not for someone else.  Yet it has been done, as you might know if you've been around for several years.  Remember Carson and Content Done Better?

More importantly, though, how do you define value?  Monetary value?  Well then yes, she may have a point (although, as I already mentioned, selling a one-person freelance business has been done before).  But for most of us, I would say that the value we get out of freelancing is being able to earn our living doing something for which there aren't many career options in the traditional job market.  I definitely see that as being valuable.  You're carving out a career for yourself where there aren't many options.  Sure, maybe you have to work hard at it to succeed, but isn't that better than not being able to do it at all?

I don't like to criticize the book, because it does have some really great points about who should or shouldn't be running a business.  But I also think that saying there is no point in one-person businesses is a little short-sighted.  What do you think?

More pricing wisdom from The Office

I love how often The Office finds humor in real-life lessons.  I've blogged about it before: the classic whoever/whomever debate, and Michael Scott's lessons in the importance of pricing.

We're on season 7 now.  A few nights ago we watched "The Search," where Michael Scott is lost in the city without his wallet.  He gets hungry and tries to con a hot dog stand owner into giving him a free hot dog.  First he offers his watch as collateral, saying that he'll come back later and pay the guy in order to get his watch back.  The stand's owner basically says that he can't do anything with a watch, and that he needs money.

Of course, this makes me think of website owners who try to get freelancers to write content for their site for free, often promising "exposure" or that they'll pay them when the site starts making money.  Regarding "exposure," what has value for the client may not have value for the vendor, so how does it benefit you to get exposure on a site no one has ever heard of?

In other words, what do you need with a men's watch?

And, seriously, who comes back later to pay?  Michael claims his watch is worth $45, but maybe it's a $10 watch and he doesn't care if he goes back to settle the bill.  Promises of future payment are the same as being paid nothing at all.

When that doesn't work, Michael tries another tact.  He asks, "What do you do with the hot dogs you don't sell at the end of the day?" and of course, the vendor says, "I throw them away."  Michael suggests that he "throw one away now, in my mouth."

Ah, another approach used by websites trying to get free content: "You're new/blogging/a stay at home mom, so you'll be writing for free either way.  Instead of spending that time writing for free for yourself, why don't you write for free for me?"

What a winner of an argument.  Unbelievably, some "clients" seem to think the logic here is sound.  Sorry, but if I'm writing for free, why would I want to do it for any other reason than my own pleasure?  Besides, if I write for myself, I keep the rights to the work and could possibly benefit from it later on.

Of course, the vendor still refuses, so Michael says, "You've lost my business!" and storms off.  It's funny on the show, because obviously his "business" was of no value to the hot dog vendor, yet website owners make that kind of threat all the time: "If you don't write for us for free now, we won't pay you when the website becomes profitable," or, "you'll lose out on this GREAT opportunity to showcase your work."

Lesson learned: Beware of wallet-less Michael Scotts trying to con you out of free hot dogs.

My birthday week

Tuesday of last week was my birthday.  Since my workload has been a bit on the slow side lately, I decided to take advantage of it and celebrate my birthday all week.  I still worked — in fact, I even worked on my birthday — but not as much, and I made sure that I did something for me every single day.  I went to the barn every day that week, read a lot, took hot baths, and just in general pampered myself.  With the exception of a fall from my horse on Friday, it was a great week.

As I've gotten older, I've gotten into the habit of not doing much to recognize my birthdays.  Sometimes I'll try to take the day off, but that can be hard to manage.  I found the week-long method much easier — I didn't feel guilty about working on my birthday that way, because I knew that I would go to the barn later, or read a book in the middle of the afternoon, or something else like that.  I think I may have to make this a yearly tradition!

What do you do to celebrate your birthday?