Working from Bed
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"This study indicates that the use of computers and mobile telephones in the bedroom are related to poor sleep habits" https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2869...
"Computer use, TV viewing, and the presence of media in children's bedrooms may reduce sleep duration, and delay bedtimes." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23886318/
As I recall from Hartle, to paraphrase: "The experimentalists in the basement live longer than the theorists upstairs, but the view is worth it." My recollection from the associated problem is that the difference, over a lifetime, is microseconds.
MTW won't give even that much aid :). Good luck with your studies; there's a lot to learn.
(Ok it's valid for those.. but I'm still feeling a bit salty.)
Of course, I understand the need for such measures. Hopefully I’ll manage to continue consulting through this without losing a customer.
Using the bed as a workspace means you're bringing your work with you to bed. You completely erase any possibility of separation between workspace and sleep space.
With only one bedroom available, your only way to assign a dedicated sleeping space is to use your bed to sleep and a desk to work.
Throwing in some anecdotal opinion, I live in a studio style open apartment and have no issue sleeping well in my bed even if I can see my workspace. I however had issues sleeping back when I lived in a smaller apartment and used the bed as my main computer space.
Is it objectively better or worst? There's no study backing either theories. However, I believe that even working on a small desk next to your bed would be better than working directly from the bed. Otherwise you'd be effectively training yourself to think about work while lying down in the comfort of your sleeping area, instead of training yourself to fall asleep and relax.
As with most human behavior studies, I have yet to see a sleep study that managed to satisfactorily demonstrate causality in place of correlation when it comes to working in bed ruining your quality of sleep.
In this particular case, you could imagine that people who work from their bed tend to be on screens in their bed until just before bedtime, causing them to be more "wired" than people who have a dedicated office space and avoid screens in their bed entirely.
I feel ya.
Back when I was running a one-man startup, I had myself, my wife, and a cat in 450 square feet. Except when I was out gladhanding potential clients, I worked from my bed.
At least back then, I could decamp for Starbucks if I got the crazies. But today's studio apartment dwellers are really screwed. Especially if you live somewhere hot, somewhere cold, or a city that removed all of the public benches to "combat" homelessness.
So, like the average "family with 2 kids" size of house in most of the world :-)
The two of us now live in a 700 square foot 4 BR, where we use one BR as a walk-in closet and another as a study. Our landlord claims 13 family members lived in this unit when he was a kid.
Also a lot of 700 sq ft apartment with 3-4 bedrooms have 2 bathrooms which further reduces the total available space. It's quite common for a family of 5-6 (2 kids, parents plus grand parents) + 1 live-in helper to live in such an apartment. The live-in helper usually gets a windowless closet for her room (so around 21 sq ft) that's next to the kitchen (I have a hard time with the kind of living conditions offered to helpers but I guess it's really a shitty situation in terms of space for everyone). This is the living situation of a middle class family able to afford a 4,500 usd/month apartment and a 700 usd/month live-in helper (there's no daycare available in hk which is why a lot end up getting a live-in helper after having kids).
With covid, schools have been closed and people had to work from home making things much harder.
In the developing world (and heck, in Southern Europe and the Balkans too, as recently as the 60s-70s) farmers used to live, whole family (extended one at that) in ~ 500 sq ft houses... One typical case was that brothers e.g. would often sleep in the same bed for 1 person, one with feet in one direction, the other in the opposite.
Not lucky, in fact it is the norm for them to have a dwelling. Adobe/mud or some other local construction technique.
> In the developing world (and heck, in Southern Europe and the Balkans too, as recently as the 60s-70s) farmers used to live, whole family (extended one at that) in ~ 500 sq ft houses... One typical case was that brothers e.g. would often sleep in the same bed for 1 person, one with feet in one direction, the other in the opposite.
Thats one example, in parts of Asia they have more room.
I'm surprised that there hasn't been a real advertising push for solutions such as this during the last year. I can visualize it and probably draft up plans for it (when I do woodworking I always do my own plans). But I haven't seen this exact concept anywhere.
I thought I might go stir crazy or have elevated levels of conflict with my wife, but it worked out okay. On the other hand, I can understand why the Council of Europe deems 8 sq. m. (86 sq. ft.) the minimum prison cell size for two prisoners.
For me, quarantine was the best couple months of my recent working life. My home office is way nicer (quieter, fewer interruptions, better computer and peripherals, better chair etc) than my work office, I got to have brunch, lunch, and an afternoon snack with my kids, had no commute, played fetch with the dog or took walks in the woods for breaks, got a ton of projects done around the house and in the workshop, played with my kid in his play room, and I'm a bit of an introverted hermit so being home without a stream of social visitors was really a cherry on top.
I don't know how to properly say sorry or thank you to urbanites for whom quarantine was more like a prison experiment. I guess I'll try with "I'm sorry that your experience was so difficult. Thank you so much for caring and for going through that quarantine."
By the way, always fun to meet people from HN in HK, so shoot me an email and we could have lunch or drinks after the fourth wave is over.
Luckily, we gave the second hotel's front desk a second call at 9 a.m. to double-check they accepted quarantine guests before making our online booking. The day shift guy who came in told us that they didn't accept quarantine guests.
Now, it's a bit better organized, with an official government list of all acceptable quarantine hotels. Though, prices have gone up significantly for those few hotels. When we arrived, there was a government list, but it was just a subset of all hotels accepting quarantine guests, and of course prices shot up and vacancies vanished for those hotels on the government list.
CGP Grey had a pretty good video about living in the lockdown titled "Spaceship you".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck
I'd say that a lot of work that isn't really work can be done from bed, but it does mess up your training for "bed == sleep".
I used to work from bed before 2020, but the lockdown has made the "walk downstairs to work, grab a coffee along the way" into a natural thing rather than putting a number of other high attention activities (shaving, driving) between being awake-enough to sitting at my desk.
Every once in a while I see an article from a major publication that makes me recoil. And I don't know how to express it but the fact that someone's gonna kill themself (long) after following the article's advice isn't the worst part of it at all.
Most people don't actually kill themselves, they just desperately want out of a situation they can't convey to anyone, can't fix on their own, and makes no sense. It's like if someone's house got robbed and they got beaten into a hospital bed on every prime-numbered day of the month, but no one told them those rules and no one believed them when they talked about it. The day that poor bastard got fed up, burned their house down, and just started walking would be better than the thirty days before that, even excluding prime-numbered ones.
Anyway I'll be holding my breath for an apology article from the new york times so I guess I'll see you on the other side
I tested this myself and found A) my sleep did not get any worse when I worked from bed and B) if anything, it got better, especially during times of illness, because I was able to get some important things done at the higher-energy highs and this in turn helped me get better sleep later.
IMO the bed and laying down in general is a great place to do mental activities including work tasks. I continue to get great results from planning (incl. pseudocoding) while laying down.
Anecdata, but I'm noticing that a lot of people aren't testing this themselves, just trusting somebody else's bell curve, along which they may actually plot at any given point.
Sounds like the first sentence of the article:
> For years, sleep experts have held one piece of common wisdom above all else: that devices have no place in the bedroom.
> A primary argument against using devices in bed is that it can further erode the boundaries between work and home, and disrupt your sleep cycle.
Basically the adjustment is to rebuild routines and habits surrounding the new use cycle of the bed.
So, it's not trivial, but not a biological limitation nor something that can't be managed.
Turns out, my mental health is much better when I have an office to go to. 1h20 in commute (round-trip), no privacy, tons of distractions, and still I'm happier when I get to leave the house to go to work.
I suspect it's mostly just a matter of getting out of the house. Those 4 walls get pretty oppressive after a while.
I, too, found myself working from bed. It was not an improvement, and ended up being the last step towards a crippling depression that wouldn't let me get out of bed in the first place.
So, for me at least, working from bed is awful. Ergonomically, emotionally, spiritually just f---ing draining.
This is very important to me. It helps me forget about work when heading home and vice versa. I also like talking to people in person at the office more than relying on Zoom watercooler rooms.
In the mornings, I leave early to workout at the company gym. (Not true at the moment, because all gyms are closed in my area right now.) That commute gives me time to wake up and get into the gym mindset.
After work, it gives me time to unwind, let go of the stress for the day, and get into my dad-of-4 mindset.
Without it, everything blends together. My work days would never really start and never really end.
Mine's 45m-1h to work, and 1h-2h home in a city with notoriously awful traffic design and flow. It's basically just 5 miles of gridlock. In the heavy urban traffic I find it actually _adds_ a lot of stress to my day--it definitely feels like a mad max style survival adventure more than anything.
I used to commute 45 minutes each way on a nice dual line divided highway with very light traffic. Barring the odd blizzard, I found it like you describe... A great chance to let my mind switch states between home/work. And it was nice to have an hour and a half every day where I _couldn't_ beat up on myself for not being productive and could actually just truly sit and enjoy listening to a podcast or something.
If I had a nice weather-protected path to walk to work (like the underground networks in some major cities), walking would be far preferable to driving.
My argument, nay, my observation, is that some type of transition between work and home appears to be vital to my well-being. I suspect that the time component for that transition is just as important.
For example: What if I built an office in my garage? That would give me a physically different space, but I'd be deprived of that transition time to switch mindsets.
What I don't know is how much time is needed for the same effect. Would a 5 minute walk suffice? Could it be even better? Who knows?
First, you should have a dedicated work space. A room is preferable, but you can make do by erecting sight barriers to your desk for example. The main idea is to make it easy to leave your work 'at work' and not be reminded of it in your free time.
Second, clothing. If you feel your day lacks structure make sure you're not lounging about in a tracksuit all day. Put on clothes you would wear to the office before work, and take them off at the end of your day. Wear shoes.
Third, take a walk before starting work and afterwards. A 20 minute walk will allow you to plan the day ahead and get in work mode, and will let you unpack the day and unwind after work. Ignore the rain.
So basically, make going to work a ritual (as foolish or unlikely to work as it may sound). You should also minimise distractions and control impulses to do non-work related things while 'at work'. If you can, consider getting out of the house for lunch or eat at your desk and not at the dinner table. Lastly, take part or try to instigate remote water cooler chats with colleagues to keep sane.
I curtained the doorway off, to remind the rest of the family (and myself) that when it is closed, I'm at work. Put a standing desk in, to help maintain my health.
I still shower and show up 'at work' around the same times I did before. At first I was there around the same time I'd leave for work, but I found I was not able to concentrate productively for 12-13 hours a day, so I've cut it closer to an 8-6 schedule, with some breaks to eat with family or drop kids off where they may need to go.
Take advantage of the greater flexibility- take the good with the bad. Was listening to Phish on the surround sound speakers connected to my receiver via bluetooth to my Mac Mini the other day, while working on my desktop I'd brought home attached to a nice big bright 4k monitor that I have at home, and connected via SD-WAN to the corporate network. Was a pretty productive and glorious way to get a lot of work done.
Then all your clothes stop fitting.
Working from bed is like eating ice cream for breakfast. Sounds great, nice maybe once as a treat, then becomes horrible.
I need structure, routine, and not having to go into work makes enforcing that routine so much harder.
(I admit that I do do some "home" things at work, like laundry. That mostly involves turning on the machine and tending to it in an hour, so not a big time commitment but nice to get done during the day.)
Previously I worked from home a couple of days per week. I augmented those days by walking to a nearby coffee place in the morning to get out of the house and get some movement in.
I'd also try to meet someone for lunch when schedules worked out.
This year many of us combined working from home with a restriction on all of those "safety valves" and in-person socialization in general.
Personally I think I was happiest with the part-time flexible work from home setup, but I think I could make full time work if I moved to an area with more walking-distance amenities.
That's very different from working from home every day. If it was an option, I'd love to work from home twice a week and from the office the other 3. That would be a nice balance.
> This year many of us combined working from home with a restriction on all of those "safety valves" and in-person socialization in general.
Definitely an interesting question. Would I have enjoyed working from home if I could still go out and socialize every day? Impossible to say but I'd love to find out some day.
Yeah, people need to realize, this is not normal. Even I, as a highly distractable/sensitive introvert have had trouble coping. And I won't lie, the bicycle commute to work was great for waking me up and energizing me.
That said, I would prefer 100% WFH for the remainder of my career, no contest. There's just no getting around the level of control I have over everything from noise, to light, temperature, etc. It helps that I live alone and have a dedicated separate home office. And I can always go for a run, walk, or bicycle ride in place of the commute.
I mean, that's a bit disparaging. I've seen some beautiful 600 sqft apartments.
But to your general point, I agree. I just don't think a space needs to be shitty in order to be inappropriate for daily work. If its small or the area lacks food outdoor amenities, it's easy to get cabin fever.
Presence or non-presence of kids in said home definitely is a factor, but I have heard unhappiness expressed by both parents and non-parents.
The biggest factor is that the lack of an office simply reduces the effectiveness of social communication. People still talk, but the talking is simply not as effective nor, importantly as fulfilling as the in-person chatter is in the office environment.
Case in point: My partner works from home, has for years, and has no interest in working from an office. It's worth noting, however, that she also prefers it when I leave every day. (Read into that what you will.)
Unfortunately there is no compromise that can please everyone if things return to how they were before, just finding an employer that caters to one's personal preference.
We have started working Thursdays and Fridays in the office and the rest at home. Its nice to get out and do something different and still have all the time savings and time to think at home most of the week. It does still require you to live close to the office though.
Here in NZ we went thru a heavy lockdown for 6 weeks, I hardly noticed it
I moved to a Midwestern city and wake up at around 11am, just in time for my 9am (SF time) meeting lol. I chat w colleagues constantly on zoom and get off after 5 hrs.
Of course I got my SO to keep company so it’s never boring. I suspect all the mental health issues we’ve been seeing in the pandemic have been from single or more extraverted folks
But for introverts who are already in stable relationship, I love the “isolation”!
My first job out of college, my boss actually told me "Don't miss meetings, don't miss deadlines and I don't care when you're here." About 3 weeks in I was dying to go to the office and just stayed there all the time.
In order to make WFH work for me now a few things had to fall into place:
1. My wife got so busy with her business that she has no free time to deal with anything at the house during the day, so any random person that needs to come by (contractors, cable repair, etc) I'm already here for. Additionally, most days I can use my lunch break for any errands that need to be run without it interfering with my after work hours.
2. I have 2 dogs that keep me company.
3. I've found other friends of mine who work from home or are up for grabbing lunch in the area. I tend to meet somebody out for lunch at least once a week.
4. I keep a TV on in the background, out of sight (usually the weather channel). I don't know why, but it makes the house feel less empty all day.
5. Facebook and some relevant community message boards (Clemson sports, local programmers Slack). Just need some type of social outlet.
I think the world is split into people who really need a background soundtrack of some sort and those who hate it.
Back when I sometimes had a roommate on group (non-work) trips, one of the things that drove me craziest was someone who just had to turn on the TV as soon as they walked into a room.
The funny thing is that I'm pretty much fine with ambient people sound. I just don't like background TV and, for the most part, I don't even turn on music when I'm working.
If I put music on, it needs to be pretty consistent tempo with no words so that it's "there" but I'm not listening to it. The original Ironman soundtrack was my goto for this for years.
Any chance anyone knows how successful these are at noise cancellation (without the use of music to drown out said noise)?
You hear a lot more that's going on in your head/body, and regret not wearing earplugs to those gigs you went to years ago.
Apple is working on fixing that. There is a setting on ios 14 that can alert you when it hears things like a fire alarm, dogs barking, people yelling, etc.
I’d encourage you to avoid conflating the two as the experience is vastly different.
They can be.
I'm fortunate to have enough space in my house that I can silo the different areas of the house. I have a few places I'm happy to work in, but I also have a basement that I never do work in.
If you're doing better great, if not, strangers can be a tremendous help.
Anyone who thinks that working from bed is good in any way, shape, or form, is deluding themselves. It's an ergonomic nightmare that is unsustainable. It's lack of separation between Life and Work. It's everything WFH should NOT be.
In a year, there will be another article that says "Working from Bed: Maybe not so much"
I do love being told I'm deluded.
I can tell you that I personally hate being away from my desktop. I like the feeling of the office chair, I like my ergonomic keyboard, I like having a ton of monitors to organize my triple-wide Emacs window, some terminals, some browsers for documentation, Slack, Discord, a music player, etc. But... other people probably don't do as much I/O with their computer, and can probably lay in bed and get stuff done.
When I worked at Google I always saw people sitting on bouncy balls typing away on their laptops, and I guess they got stuff done doing that, so I just chalk it up as "I don't personally understand it". I like my desk, but I see no reason to require people to sit at desks all day if they'd prefer to be in bed. If it doesn't work for them, they'll probably stop doing it.
I can't imagine anyone thinking being hunched over all day with your neck leaning forward could somehow magically be good for their back and neck alignment, or that lying down all day would be a positive of your cardio health. You'd think they'd be convinced when they went to look for any research backing their bizarre claims and couldn't find any.
I work from my bed, I work at my desk, I work pretty much everywhere in my home and it's not at all a problem. I'm really annoyed by these overgeneralisations about what's right or wrong for individuals, and all these buzzwords about "separation of life and work", "work-life balance", I love my work and I sleep like a mule even if I work ten minutes before I go to sleep.
I don't at all get these neurotic optimisations that people make, and having random strangers tell them how to live in their own home. If you like to work from your bed work from your bed, if it doesn't work for you stop, but to tell people they're delusional is nuts.
It's not just about this particular topic, there seems to be an entire emerging industry of life-coaches, sleep and whatever else coaches who try to convince people of strange norms that they have to uphold in their workplace or home. It's like the Western version of Feng Shui or something, oh no you slept badly a week, bring in the sleep coach to rearrange your furniture and exorcise the bad software from your bedroom
I'd suggest people who need to compartmentalise their work from their life this much to ask if it isn't that they're unsatisfied with their job that makes them sleepless rather than doing work on a bed.
Since the pandemic, I started spending some afternoons working from my car at the beach. Find a beach where you can park overlooking the ocean while working on the laptop. For breaks, you can take walks on the beach. Large bodies of water are very soothing.
- Removed the sanctity of bed. The bed is a great place to train yourself to decompress and unwind.
- Absolutely destroyed my back. I'd build pillow forts around myself to compensate for increasing weak muscles.
- Hindered the ability to notice shifts in my mood/difficulties in my routine. Eg: I struggle to get out of bed these days.
Know a person with an actual destroyed back who can't even drive a car, but is able to work from bed.
Yep. I had to learn muscle building exercises to get out of that situation. It's totally worth it.
Given the nature that they're physical, explaining them over text could lead to problems and I don't want to recommend something that could injure someone due to a misunderstanding.
As an overall concept, muscle building works by finding the sore muscles, holding them in spot where they are sore, but holding in spot in a soft way, not a tense way, and then counting slowly to 10. Then give 5 to 10 seconds of relax, then do again, 10 times at first. It only takes a few weeks doing exercises every other day for the muscle strength to build.
Headaches by definition are caused by tense / sore muscles, so learning the right exercises will remove headaches. However, sinus headaches, migraines, and cluster headaches are different. Also, if you have mattress or pillow problems, muscle building exercises are like walking up a high altitude mountain; it's not going to help as much as you're like. It may help to start with your mattress, if applicable, and then learn muscle building exercises.
Posture problems, like having your head too far forward, is caused by using the incorrect muscles which then strengthens the incorrect ones and weakens the correct ones. (Usually neck and upper back muscles.) By muscle building the weak ones, your posture will naturally fix itself.
When working on shoulder and upper back muscles I do muscle building exercises with my arms with 5 lb weights.
When it comes to headaches, I do a series of neck muscle building exercises.
Oh also, chiropractors are pseudo-science. If you feel like you need a chiropractor, what for 99% of the people out there actually need is muscle building exercises. The muscles hold up the spine, so even with a messed up spine muscle building exercises help more than just about anything else, often completely removing pain.
This is a great way to increase mental health issues, decrease physical health and hygiene and generally make everything worse.
Maybe in the future when morbidly obese humans float around in hover beds and purchase things only from Buy-N-Large this will be "great" - but this reeks of a strange "pro COVID lockdown" narrative I've been seeing lately.
Along with phrases like "the new normal" and such. There does seem to be a push to keep people from wanting and expecting to go back to the real normal anytime soon.
Though who stands to gain from this alternate reality? It would seem the liberal left wants to normalize it (even post-vaccine), but I don't understand why.
The far-left folks are pro lockdown but also want to help the underprivileged. No one is hurt worse by lockdowns. They want to defund the police, and yet by now even the hardened ideologue can admit that less police is maybe not a great plan. The left is anti-authoritarian but engages in almost textbook authoritarian behavior. (Cancel culture, democratic governors having emergency powers for 9+ months now etc etc) They hate capitalism but enjoy the byproducts (my most socialist friends can't get enough of Amazon prime - the irony is completely lost on them).
There is just no way to reconcile the platform. It is completely incoherent.
Economic trouble and poverty help the left by making them the savior upon whom everyone is dependent. After all, it was the Great Depression that gave FDR’s New Deal a free pass in the first place — and that really was the beginning of the modern Democratic Party’s economic platform.
They want people to be poor. That’s how they get the majority of their votes.
As to "defunding police", I like to rephrase it as "fund people, not police" - use those budgets to give people help before they get to the point where the police get involved, rather than having next to no safety net and a bunch of cops itching to use all the military hardware they've got.
There you go, some coherence. Have a nice day.
I personally think the author of this article is trying to give people clinical depression. But I'm having trouble figuring out how that fits into their leftist agenda. Maybe it's because leftists are themselves lazy and unmotivated, and they want to feel better about themselves by sabotaging others? But wouldn't they see that it's unfair to hurt other people just because of their own inadequacies?
I don't know, what do you think? I can't figure it out.
To be precise, they are in the top four panels, not the bottom five.
The last paragraph basically claims "it's not working from bed that's bad, it's the stigma against working from bed that's bad!"
Earlier this year she attacked the Away CEO Steph Korey, she then spun Balaji's tweet that used Taylor's own words with a misleading crop to play victim:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet...
She defends Tiktok and the CCP out of ignorance because she prefers writing everything as anti-facebook, anti-US tech (this was a similar twitter thing a couple months ago, but there's no quora summary).
Recently she was tweeting NIMBY style things about new housing ruining the character of the neighborhood and blaming tech for wanting more housing.
Everything she writes starts with a massive anti-tech motivated reasoning bias and then crafts a story around it. I think she also defended recode here, but I'm not 100% sure (I've since blocked her on Twitter): https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...
I wouldn't put much thought into her articles, she's the main person that comes to mind when I think of the decline of the NYT.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=sit-up+pillow&iax=images&ia...
Unless you had a recent surgery and the body is weakened or you have a serious condition (torn discs, etc) I’d advise to try to ditch all these crutches which end up weakening us up in the long term. However, I admit they could be very useful and help with back pain. I used to not be able to concentrate because of backpain and lumbar support did help at the time.
I tried sitting on a yoga ball for a while, but realized that it's not doing anything more for my back (because of how I already sit), but it's difficult to turn between my three laptops because the ball sticks to the floor and my clothes. So I went back to the chair. <shrug>
I do a fair bit of cycling and every-other-day core workouts that are kinda needed because cycling makes my hamstrings and lower back tight. It all happens to come together and I feel the same as you, much better shape in my 40s than my 20s.
I might dare to say I feel pretty darn good physically, most of the time. And can even push myself to pretty hard points (where things hurt, but not in an injury type of way) when I want. I hope I can keep this up, but sort of feel like a bunch of good practices that already are in place can lead to that.
This probably wouldn't work out well nowadays with a desktop computer because desktop monitor sizes are usually way bigger than they were back then so you would have tilt your head too far, but it might still be fine with a laptop.
It's not great* for problem solving, but it is a wonderful recipe for depression.
* Actually, I frequently solved problems that I was stuck on immediately after waking up. However, I am convinced I would have solved these problems had I not been so sleep deprived in the first place.
This will destroy your back after even a short amount of time.
I really hope that one thing we get from this pandemic is not just that remote work is more accepted, but that there's more understanding and flexibility over people's individual situations (without them having to try and justify themselves). This would help so many people, whether they're disabled, or juggling childcare, or whatever.
But there are moments (once or twice a day) when I need to work on a specific piece of code that I don't mind center stage on the laptop display and I unplug everything and move to the bed for 20 minutes just for the calm, cozy feeling and a little bit of extra concentration.
I've been patiently waiting for a 32" 4k 144hz hdmi 2.1 ips display. I've noticed manufacturers seem to like making them in 27" (too small) and 43" (too big!) sizes.
I have questions. How far away do you sit? How is a 43" screen for coding? Do you use a tiling window manager to allocate all that space? Do you use it for gaming at all? If so, how hard is it to keep track of everything on the display? Do you find yourself having to turn your head to keep track of everything?
> How far away do you sit?
70cm - closer than a TV, further than a smaller monitor.
I have it wall-mounted on an arm, so I can adjust the distance if I feel the need (which is rare)
Browsers and IDEs and terminals all let you scale the fonts, and I apply a modest amount of zoom.
> How is a 43" screen for coding?
I like my 40" screen, and I'd recommend one to anyone with the space. I chose a single large screen in preference to a multi-monitor setup.
I'd probably have liked it even more when I was a teen with great eyesight.
> Do you use a tiling window manager to allocate all that space?
No, but you will often want to use multiple windows - CAD software and things you might still fullscreen, but webpages and suchlike don't generally benefit from it.
When I got it, Ubuntu let you tile windows with Ctrl+Alt+Numpad - alas they dumped that feature, so now I have to resize my windows manually.
> Do you use it for gaming at all? If so, how hard is it to keep track of everything on the display?
Yes, but I generally play slow-paced games like Civilization.
Many games scale up the entire UI with screen resolution, and you can always move your chair back if you want the small-screen experience.
Obviously, if you want to play fast-paced games like FPSes in 4K you'll need a $$$ graphics card; initially, I had a "4K capable" GPUs and it would run spreadsheets and web browsing and 4K video no problem - but not a triple-A FPS.
> Do you find yourself having to turn your head to keep track of everything?
With my seating I move my eyes rather than my head.
I don't use scaling, so it's basically like having four 21.5" FullHD panels, and the distance isn't that problematic because of the pixel density, but mainly because of the fact that it occupies my whole visual field and it feels a bit weird.
I have it hooked to a vanilla Ubuntu machine with GNOME, nothing special. I usually put RubyMine (I do Ruby on Rails) with all the bells and whistles and sidebars and toolbars on the left side of the screen, full height, which gives me a FullHD code editor and a FullHD debugger window, and on the left side I have a browser window with a terminal or a JS console. And some Spotify peeking behind it or something. This gets me through the whole day, I don't need any i3-style black magic to handle my 5 windows.
The screen has been sitting in the office for quite a while. People tried it for a bit and went back to their 3X" 4K panels, but I fell in love with it immediately.
Actually the "having to turn your head" is the most interesting aspect. Yes, I do have to turn my head a lot. I have to turn my head and sometimes move my whole body when I need to see some detail somewhere and I like that about this setup. Not sure whether it's ergonomic or healthy but I like that I can physically move myself further left or right and focus on one part of the screen.
Unfortunately, I use a PS4 for gaming and my laptops are an iGPU-equipped Dell and a M1 Macbook Air, so 3D gaming in 4K is out of the question.
Turning your head is a function of field of view, which is a function of screen size and distance. It is easy to change the distance with a keyboard tray or a monitor mount.
Personally I just find it extremely uncomfortable, and I just can't be productive that way. Plus you have to wonder what the long term effects are, it doesn't seem very ergonomic.
I need a keyboard on a table and sit in a chair in front of it, or stand in front of it if it is height-adjustable.
I need space to put things nearby, like a glass of water, without having to care if it will fall and spill.
But I'm ok with having a tablet in bed to browse HN or Reddit or listen to something on YouTube until I fall asleep.
1) My back would hurt after a half hour of this.
2) My brain would not be engaged in a state of too much comfort. (i.e. I'd get sleepy). In fact, I even keep my work room in the house kinda cold (by not putting in a heater) so I can be more alert.
3) I'm a developer so I need a full keyboard and multiple screens.
4) Most importantly, I need a clear separation or line of delineation between work and rest. I don't want to mix the two together. The thought is as perverse to me as eating while taking a shit.
My wife is the polar opposite. We're lucky to be in a situation where we can both have dedicated home offices at this time. We already had a desk for her, but her work let her take home a good chair, and two monitors with a stand. We set up a really nice office for her, but I'd say that she works from bed or the couch 95% of the time. In fact, the only time she uses her office is when she has an important video call.
I don't know how she does it, and I still believe that she would be more productive/efficient at a desk. For me, just having the extra screen real estate and a keyboard and mouse are enough for me to want to be at my desk.
A related point is that if you're not feeling sleepy, don't lay around in the bed waiting for sleep (go to a different area of the room, if possible)—just as how we don't (?) sit around at the dinner table waiting for hunger to arrive.
[+] With warts and all, like any book. Don't let the so-called "egregious errors" pointed out by some guy online distract from the main points made in the book.
And take advantage of human nature: we're creatures of habit; build solid routines for compounding benefits.
Seriously, f*ck bed work :|
The pictures in the article do not demonstrate a viable way to work from bed for long periods (though shifting positions frequently enough can offset the postural problems quite a bit).
Article goes on to say that anecdotal evidence from people that work in bed since COVID-19 pandemic are doing fine.
What I can say myself about this is that since I've started working full-time from home in 2018, there were many "great" things I started doing during work. It was a bit like finally having the chance to be "free" and working how I wanted - and not my employer.
Three years later I'm now convinced that there's reasons why people go to offices and why there's certain rules in those.
Anyways, technically speaking "I'm not working from home anymore". I rented out an office space. It's as comfy as home (still, there's no bed). But having a dedicated space to work and face challenges is great, because afterwise I can drive home - and when I'm exhausted, fall into my bed.
I have noticed though that your work space doesn't need to be fully dedicated though, it just needs to not be a leisure room. We adopted a Belgian Mal mix in February that needed supervision throughout the day, so I transitioned from my office to my dining room. We don't use that outside of the occasional game night or other gathering, and the table makes a nice makeshift desk with a laptop. I found working from there comparable to working from my office.
I have been doing this for years. I don't have problems with my back or wrists like I did years ago in an office, even though I had an office chair, desk, and keyboard drawer.
But laying down for extended periods of time is known to cause health problems. In hospitals, bed sores are a well known problem associated with excessive in-bed time. Muscular atrophy is another.
It's kinda crazy how just a couple years ago there was a standing desk craze touting the miraculous benefits to muscular/skeletal health, and now we've got a 180 degree turn with a major publication putting out a claim that laying down for extensive amounts of time is somehow a good idea (never mind the whole "sitting is the new smoking" thing!)
Geez!
For example, I definitely read books from bed, as I’m sure others do as well, even those that object to television or working from bed. Thinking about it now, lying down may help to displace my mind to the story more than sitting.
With that I can't even remotely imagine myself working from bed. I do exactly 2 things in bed - 1) sleep, 2) wild guess here
I can't quite get the see webcam to make me look like I'm sitting normally though so I have to sit up sometimes like some kind of pre-COVID animal in an "office".
I don't admit to it often but there you go.
> I recommend taking one of the bedrooms in your house and converting into a proper home office.
I have one. I don't like using it.
Ergonomic issues aside, many commenters in this thread have discussed the other drawbacks of re-purposing your bed for work.
Strong physical separation between distinct aspects of life is critical for me to get anything done. Covid has disrupted things enough as it is.
Moving my office out of my bedroom eliminated 99% of the claustrophobia I had developed. Having where you work and sleep in two different mental compartments is more valuable than you could ever anticipate.
I need some distance between my bedroom and office both physically and mentally.