We all have to sit and work sometimes

Nowadays many people spend hours and hours per day working, gaming or doing other kinds of activities on their computers. Even if it looks like phones and tablets took over the world, it’s not the case yet, computers are still a thing and that won’t change soon. Many kinds of productive activities are still done on a computer, mostly because of the great experience, performance and the productivity boost but also because of the way we use them, we sit at a desk and get stuff done.

Sitting at a desk is one of the most productive things you need to start with, getting comfortable, limiting yourself to the keyboard and mouse, focusing on the screen and that’s your whole world in that moment. Well even if we make sitting at a desk very pleasing, it is not in many cases. If you work remotely or run your own business at home, do long gaming sessions or have a ton of videos or photos to edit… in many of those cases you need to spend a lot of time glued to the desk, doesn’t sound like much fun, does it ?

To make the stay more enjoyable people started to pay more attention to the environment where they spend most of their lives in. Slapping a computer on a dinning table and call it a day is no longer an option for the people we’re talking about. That’s not their news checking station, it’s their workspace, workstation or as gamers might call it the battle-station, globally known as their setup.

Setups culture

This trend started in the past few years in many communities: gamers, YouTubers, designers, developers, remote workers… the common point is people trying to make the place where they spend the day as comfortable and cozy as possible while sharing tips and collaborate with each others. Of course every community of those has it’s version of the best setup for the needs they have.

Social media contributed majorly to the rise of the setups culture, notably Instagram and YouTube where people share constantly pictures and videos showcasing the great setups they have built, and how that improved their workflow and overall productivity.

Setups are unique to the needs

Every community has special trends in the setups they build, and also different criteria to judge setups, for example:

PC gaming community consider setups as an extension of the world of the competitiveness they live in, so setups is another competition where they try to showcase the most high-end parts and gear, that’s not to say that gamers build setups to brag about, but the better the setup you have, the better gamer you can be.

Developers tend to love screen real estate, so developers setups tend to have many monitors in different orientations, seeing some insane weird networking or electronics gear is not strange at all. For developers even tooling and softwares counts in the setups.

Designers love to show the artistic side of themselves in the setups, their setups look like photos from a magazine, very clean with beautiful colors in sunny places full of plants and artwork.











The rise of the setups culture is very positive and helped many people in many ways. Any one nowadays can, with a quick Google search, find hundreds of setups that might inspire him, depending on his needs and his budget, to find the best parts, his best options, even deals and where to buy stuff the cheapest possible. Also setups helped raising awareness about productivity and means to boost your productivity in the hardware and software departments. Another important benefit is increasing the job satisfaction, spending hours in a clean organized place is definitely better than a messy office which results in a better work day experience.

Setups also helped solve some health issues as a consequence, with all the talk about ergonomics and best ways to stay healthy while doing work all day. In every community you will find talks, blog articles and questions about choosing the best ergonomic chairs, the best desks, best monitors, ergonomic gear, sit/stand desks, treadmill desk and more. Even companies are taking employee setups seriously and try to offer employees a better desk experience, some went a step further and now offer employees budgets to build their own setups in the best way they see fit.

Conclusion

Building a setup is definitely the best productivity hack. Taking care of the place where you do your daily work will help you improve your workflow, enjoy your job and get more out of your work, while taking care of your health. Getting involved in setups communities is the way to get ideas and learn about tricks and tips to build your perfect setup and keep upgrading it.





