44 Minutes
After not taking a break at lunchtime, I'm forcing myself to down tools now, and invest the remaining 44 minutes of the day in myself. Of course “down tools” is something of an exaggeration – I was sitting in front of the laptop at my desk at lunchtime, and I'm still sitting in front of my laptop at my desk – very little has changed.
The only time I have left my desk today has been to make coffee, or to visit the bathroom. Quite how I've managed to make my desk so spectacularly untidy is something of a mystery.
Ah – this isn't a visual medium, is it – here I am telling you about my desk, and you have no idea about it. Perhaps a tour of my working environment might be of interest (and an excellent way to procrastinate through the remaining minutes).
I sit in the corner of the first office on the second floor of the building. The ground floor is taken up with a kitchen, bathrooms, a meeting room, and a couple of offices occupied by lonely developers that only sit down there because they never moved desks. The first floor is where most of the official work goes on – with directors, project managers, customer services, and finance all having offices stretched along a corridor, adjacent to one-another.
On the third floor, as mentioned, I am in the first of three offices. I suppose technically we are in the attic – the roof slopes on one side. If you think of the room a little like a longboat, desks stretch along either side of the room, with myself and my fellow developers facing outwards. I have a desk facing a window, so can watch the goings-on outside – not that I can really see anything, being on the third floor. I sometimes hear comotions unfolding below, and lean over my desk to peer down into the atrium below.
Several years ago I worked in one of the ground floor offices for a while, and got to watch the goings-on in the buildings opposite all summer. I think I wrote at the time about the sixty something wealthy guy trying to impress his next door neighbour. She moved away. I couldn't possibly presume that her sudden departure was anything to do with his advances.
So. My desk. There's not much on it really. An IP based telephone that I have not taken advantage of at all – I generally only use it to call home – very few clients have my desk phone number. Over in the corner there is a photo of my family – taken during one of the typical family photo-shoots you do when the kids are small – all sitting in their best clothes on roll of white paper, smiling fake smiles. Over in the far corner there are two desk tidies, full of paperwork and notebooks that should have been thrown away years ago. I have no idea why I keep the notebooks – I never refer to them.
There's an empty sandwich box to my left – used to transport the lunch I hastily prepared this morning before leaving the house. I had cheddar cheese sandwiches on olive bread with some onion chutney in them today. There's also a set of headphones, unplugged because I had to take part in a conferencce call on the internet early – which meant pulling out a USB headset with a microphone on it. There's also a pencil case – the one I carry around with me everywhere – filled with pens, pencils, USB sticks, and a calculator. I don't know why I bother carrying a calculator round, when I have a computer.
Next to the laptop sits my bullet journal. I leave it open pretty much all day every day, and rapid-log the events of the day as they unfold. It's contents get used to help fill out timesheets at the end of the week, and to look back from day-to-day at things that should have got done but have not (yet). I've dithered about using Evernote instead of the Bullet Journal in recent months, but am still going with it – I tend to remember things better if I write them down.
Over on a chest of drawers alongside my desk, I have folded up a set of waterproofs and balanced a bike helmet. I cycle to work every day – three miles each way. It's not far, and doesn't take long, but keeps me fit.
I nearly forgot – the computer. All of my work happens on a laptop. Years ago we used to have desktop PCs and laptops, but now just the laptop. I don't tend to carry the laptop around if I can help it – I just take the paper notebook to meetings.
Finally, my trusty coffee mug sits on the other side of the computer. My other half bought it for me for Christmas a couple of years ago – it has the message “Leave me alone, I'm pretending to work” written on it. I keep seeing adverts for much more offensive mugs on the internet, and wishing I was brave enough to buy them.
So there you have it. I still have 23 minutes until I leave the building. Time for one more coffee!