Show Me Yours . . .

And I’ll show you mine, workspace that is.

Because that won’t work, I’ll just show you mine, and we can go from there.

Many of us work from home almost exclusively, including both Rich and me, and it seems ever more common for people to have a home office, even if they also go into an office periodically. As budgets tighten, telecommuting will become more commonplace, as employers realize they get two-for-one by allowing telecommuting: lower real estate costs by outsourcing space to employees and improved morale by offering a benefit.

I first worked from home back in 1999, and at the time, it wasn’t very common. Plus, it was pretty painful over that blazing 36.6 kbps modem. Somehow I managed though.

I returned to working from home in 2003, over broadband this time (thankfully), and as Oracle acquired more companies, the company has become more distributed with a lot more of us telecommuting.

Telecommuting isn’t for everyone, but if it is for you, then you’ll know that having the right home office is key to successful work from home. You need to have your own space, sanctum if you will, and you’ll want to have a comfortable chair. Beyond that, there are lots of ways to go.

I, for one, am a wholehearted advocate of multiple monitors to increase productivity. If you have the desk space, you should check out adding a monitor, more on how to do that cheaply later. Windows XP and Mac OS X both handle multiple monitors seamlessly; Intrepid supposedly included enhancements to how Ubuntu handles multiple monitors. One of my chief complaints with Heron was its poor, undocumented support for multiple monitors.

Not a major concern in the grand scheme, since I just moved the additional monitor to my Mac. Even if Intrepid is better at multiple monitors, I may not add one to it because the Mac graphics chip is beefier than my Dell’s.

You may not think it’s a big deal, but there are loads of studies that will tell you having between two and four monitors improves productivity. Beyond four is a stretch. Trust me on this.

I’m also a big advocate of maximizing screen resolution to give me the most real estate. I run 1600 x 1200, the highest possible on my CRT; 1280 x 1024 on my LCD and 1280 x 800 on my Macbook. I always go as big a screen as possible with the highest refresh rate; this takes some adjustment, but when your eyes get used to everything in miniature, you’ll never go back to clunky 1024 x 768.

I actually feel like my vision has improved, or at least, the atrophy of age has slowed because I exercise my eyes by looking at smaller icons and text all day long. Maybe it’s just me.

With some applications, you’ll see why more real estate is better right away, e.g. image editing packages like Photoshop. I use multiple monitors and maximum screen resolution to show me the most information possible at any given moment, a la the Matrix. Thankfully, I haven’t yet hit that threshold of information overload.

Anyway, we recently redid my office to give me a much larger desk, and my wife says my desk looks like mission control at NASA. So, I decided to show images of space as my screensaver.

But I still yearn for more displays so, one of my projects for the new year is to put a VGA splitter on my Mac and add another high resolution CRT or a large LCD. Again, the Mac has the stronger video chip, and OS X is dead simple for managing multiple monitors.

I plan to comb Craigslist for free CRTs and cheap LCDs after Christmas. Check it out; I’m sure you’ll be surprised how many people would happily give you an old, fully-functional monitor for free, just because they got a shiny new LCD for Christmas.

This is a pro tip people. You can easily and cheaply expand your home office using Craigslist. Example: I recently saw a 19″ LCD for $80, which I would have snapped up, if I hadn’t been housebound by snow for the last few days.

I’m not sure why, but there are always free, good condition CRTs available on Craigslist. I guess people don’t know they can benefit from multiple monitors, they don’t need the additional productivity, or they don’t want to devote the space to accommodating them.

But if you work from home, you know better, or at least you do now.

Another pro tip is the value of a KVM switch, which allows you to use one keyboard and one mouse on multiple computers. Yeah, I know the V is for video, but in this case doesn’t apply. My advice: if you run multiple machines, you’ll want a KVM, even if you don’t want to run multiple monitors.

Or maybe I have an uncommon configuration.

Another interesting piece of my home office is the lack of a chair. I use one of those large exercise balls as my sitting device. I switched from a chair about 18 months ago, and I’ve never looked back, pun intended. Although it’s sometimes tiring, sitting on the ball has helped me avoid back pain, which is a huge plus.

The ball forces your core to engage when you sit upright, which also builds your posture. The end result is stronger ab and back muscles which is never a bad thing in my experience. One downside is that my wife will sometimes bounce me up and down by pushing on my shoulders, which is not conducive to work, surprise!

Anyway, it’s not for everyone, but I highly recommend it over a chair.

So, that’s my workspace. Now show me yours in the comments or at least describe it. Come on, it’s not that bad.

Oh, and it’s Christmas Eve, so if you celebrate that whole thing, Merry Christmas.

Update: I started a Flickr group to aggregate all your workspace photos. No reason not share now.