My new flatmate is a creature of habbit. I’ve picked up one of his traits. Internet shopping every week. Same Shopping list. Same food. we make an additional list (pinned by the front door as we are normally running out somewhere) which we add each week. ONCE.

I used to spend hours shopping every week! Have to credit Gareth with that.

If you havent tried it, have a pop. Very useful!

I find that I often have to get up early, or have other things to do (breakfast), or have “difficulties” due to the aforementioned previous-night’s socialising. Not having to think about finding socks or underwear or the right shirt in that morning fug makes my start much smoother.

It works for chores, goals, work stuff…any stuff really. Super way of clearing your mind and organising your work.

I’ve been working at home for the last month, so what I’m going to talk about are the things that have helped me focus and get down to work. Obviously these may not be of use to everyone, but hopefully they’ll be handy to someone.

Since you’re going to be at your desk for a good portion of your day every day, it makes sense to buy something that’s going to be good for you and good for your back. The thing to look out for here (especially if you’re on the heavier side like me), is that the chair you buy conforms to BS 5459 Part 2 – basically what this means is that it’s been certified for 24 hour use for operators up to 150Kg in weight. Most chairs you’ll find on the consumer market only conform to BS EN 1335, which only covers 8 hours a day of use for operators up to 110Kg. Given the amount of time you’ll be using the chair, it’s best to go for the best you can find. Unfortunately, most online stores don’t specify which standards their chairs adhere to, leaving you needing to search for “24 hour chairs or similar”.

I’ve also made sure I have secondary “comfortable” seating in the office for those times when I want to get out of the office chair and read or watch a TV show. For me, this is a Sumo Gamer “beanbag”. I tend to spend some time in this each day, and it helps to break the monotony of sitting staring at a screen every day.

Speaking of the screen, since you’re going to be staring at this all day every day it makes sense to get the biggest and the best you can afford. I went for the Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP 24″, which has more connectors on the back than I could throw a stick at, and looks gorgeous. If I had the money for a second monitor (or Vero’s magical hat chooses me to win the LG she’s giving away) then I’d buy myself a Matrox DualHead2Go to allow my MacBook Pro to power multiple screens. Basically, the more screen real estate the better in my book.

On the computer itself, I love the idea of Virtual Desktops. On my Mac I have three set up – one for my browsers and virtual machines, one for writing code in, and one for communications. This helps me to stay focused on one task at a time, and not get distracted by people chatting on IRC or twitter, which is nice. I also have AntiRSI installed both as a way of making sure I don’t get RSI but also as a reward system to myself – if AntiRSI decides I’ve been typing enough that I deserve to take a break, then that’s great and makes me feel happy, and I take a break.

The final thing I have to have in the office I work in is some sort of Whiteboard. Currently, I’m using Magic Whiteboard (I’ve been using them since before they were on Dragons’ Den), which is great because it comes on a roll and uses static to attach to the wall, so I can easily put it up and take it down. Obviously, I’d prefer a proper permanent whiteboard, but living in a rented house precludes that, so I have to make do with what I have. Being able to swivel on my chair and make quick and easy notes with a marker pen is vital for me though – I really don’t know how I got on without it.

And that’s about all I have to say for now. If you’re really interested in my setup though you can view the video.

It made me realise that I started doing somthing which saves me 10 mins a day, plus keeps me in ‘the flow’.

Thats almost an hour a week + the ammount of time it takes me to get back into whatever i was doing!

I have snacks delivered by Graze.com at the moment (my local deli do it too) which are cheap. They arrive with my post, every day. SO, its a healthy snack, at hand, and I dont have to get up and interrupt myself when i get a bit peckish(which I do a lot!).

Graze.com Time is precious, and about the only thing i cant get back (other than my modesty after the last big night out in Bristol – Blush)… and eating, despite my love of it, sometimes gets in the way.

I habitually pick up the post when it arrives to see if im pennies richer or poorer… and now I get a wholesome snack to sit close at hand.

Laziness. Maybe. Time Saver. 5-10 mins a day Time saving + lack of flow interuption.

Am sure other people other than graze do this kind of thing!

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The solution.

Every 2 weeks I make the MOTHER of all batches and and freeze it in individual tuppaware boxes.

Presto. A box to heat and eat on the run… drag with you to the office! Killer time and effort saver!

In my case there is a little wireless box that clips on to the incoming power cable at the meter. That transmits data to a remote monitor that stays in the living room. It enables me to see how much electrical power the house is using, both minute by minute and cumulatively in kWh. It can also be configured to tell you how much you are spending minute by minute, which makes you even more conscious.

It’s been running for a few months and now I have a pretty good idea of what the “background” in the house (fridge and freezer mainly) is, and am alert if it’s higher than that. I can see when a laptop power supply has been left on and is charging an already-full battery. I can also see if lights in the kitchen or bathroom have been left on (everywhere else has low-energy bulbs which are harder to notice on the meter as they take so little energy).

If I’m downstairs and I’ve left one of the main computers on upstairs I can see that straight away and consider whether or not it really needs to be running.

I recently received the electricity bill and my provider (Ecotricity, also recommended) kindly gives me comparisons with the previous period and the same period last year. My expenditure is down significantly and at least part of that is simply the result of becoming more aware of energy usage.

No matter how much we read about the importance of backups, we never seem to do it. I have vast amounts of audio recordings on my main system and nearly losing it on one occasion taught me that it’s really worth keeping a backup of important data. Applications and the OS are less important – you can always reinstall them – but lost data is lost.

Today, hard drives are cheaper than ever before. As a result I can do the following, and you might like to consider doing the same:

1. Keep your important data on a separate, external storage system. This might be NAS or directly attached. In my case, it’s the latter (via FireWire 800; USB 2 would do fine too)

2. Make that external storage a RAID 1 array. RAID 1 is where you have two drives and everything you write to one is written to the other. A good RAID 1 system will have two SATA drive bays allowing hot-swapping of drives, and will continually monitor drive health, telling you if there’s a problem. If a drive goes down, you can install another one. In my case, the RAID array and a pair of 1.5TB SATA drives came to around £400. Note that most RAID systems will also do RAID 0. This makes the two drives into a single virtual drive with twice the space. That is NOT a backup and there is no need to use RAID 0 these days, in my view.

3. Back up the RAID system. I have a pair of 1TB external drives (also FireWire 800 in my case). Once a week, EMC Retrospect runs automatically and backs up the RAID array to one of the drives (it has compression so takes up less space than the source). When done, I take that drive off-site. The next week, Retrospect backs up to the second external drive. Then that gets swapped with the first. And so on. So one weekly backup is always off-site.

Total cost of this solution was about £600. My data is worth a great deal than that, and I bet yours is too.