How I work from anywhere with the best tools for remote work

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.160 | Today, I'm going to talk about the way that I work

00:00:06.520 | in terms of working from anywhere.

00:00:08.680 | So for the past two years,

00:00:11.080 | pretty much since we had the first COVID lockdowns in the UK,

00:00:16.080 | I've been working remotely.

00:00:18.720 | In those two years,

00:00:19.620 | I've learned a lot about working from anywhere,

00:00:24.300 | and in particular, the sort of things that you need

00:00:28.960 | to consider or the things that you need to take with you

00:00:31.680 | when you're working from anywhere.

00:00:32.800 | Because in reality, it's very different

00:00:37.800 | when you are working at home at your desk.

00:00:43.720 | It's you have built that workspace to suit you,

00:00:47.600 | or even in an office, that workspace,

00:00:50.480 | maybe it's not built to suit you,

00:00:51.720 | but it's built to suit working.

00:00:54.000 | When you start working remotely from different places,

00:00:58.880 | the chances are most places you go,

00:01:03.000 | or a lot of places you go,

00:01:05.040 | are not really going to have good workspaces.

00:01:09.480 | That's just how they are,

00:01:12.320 | because most places are not really built for working.

00:01:16.280 | So you really have to get a little bit creative sometimes,

00:01:22.280 | but you can avoid that to an extent

00:01:24.620 | if you actually take the right kit,

00:01:27.960 | if you take pretty much a remote desk setup, okay?

00:01:32.840 | So I'm gonna show you my remote desk setup,

00:01:36.800 | and we'll just talk through it.

00:01:39.200 | Now, obviously, I know that not everyone

00:01:41.780 | is able to work remotely,

00:01:44.200 | but I think in the past two years,

00:01:46.520 | it has become much more common,

00:01:49.480 | and I'm sure at least a few of you

00:01:51.800 | are probably working remotely,

00:01:54.080 | either full-time or at least part-time.

00:01:56.880 | So yeah, I hope this is useful.

00:02:01.360 | This sort of setup for me seems to be working really well.

00:02:05.120 | I can pretty much go anywhere now

00:02:07.000 | and make myself a little workspace, which is pretty cool.

00:02:12.000 | Okay, so what you can see here is pretty much my workspace,

00:02:16.700 | and obviously, as I do all these YouTube videos all the time,

00:02:20.760 | I also have this big microphone here,

00:02:25.560 | which this week, I have replaced, or not replaced,

00:02:30.560 | but I now have an alternative microphone,

00:02:33.080 | which should make it a little bit easier for traveling,

00:02:36.160 | because taking this massive road stand

00:02:39.920 | that you see here around with me, it's not a lot of fun.

00:02:44.640 | So yeah, this shotgun mic should be a lot better for me.

00:02:49.400 | But of course, most people are not really gonna need

00:02:53.120 | a microphone, so you don't need to worry

00:02:55.080 | about that anyway.

00:02:56.240 | So instead, what you actually need

00:02:59.680 | is what you can see here, pretty much.

00:03:01.720 | So I have this little stand here,

00:03:04.760 | and this is super important,

00:03:06.200 | because you're gonna be working in a lot of weird places,

00:03:11.200 | and most of them are not going to have

00:03:14.160 | good workspace setups.

00:03:17.300 | So you need your laptop to ideally be at your eye level.

00:03:22.300 | This is really important.

00:03:24.680 | And another thing that's super, super crucial about this

00:03:27.920 | is how it packs down to pretty much nothing.

00:03:31.160 | You fit in this little bag here,

00:03:33.360 | and it's incredibly lightweight.

00:03:35.800 | I don't remember how lightweight exactly,

00:03:38.880 | but it weighs nothing.

00:03:40.680 | I just put it in my bag and go, it's great.

00:03:43.600 | So another thing that's so important,

00:03:46.000 | at least for me, a second screen, okay?

00:03:48.560 | So I have this second screen.

00:03:50.040 | Obviously, your mic doesn't come with a second screen.

00:03:52.640 | I've seen some that do attach to it,

00:03:54.160 | so maybe that's worth looking into,

00:03:55.760 | but they're super expensive.

00:03:58.360 | So this screen here,

00:04:00.480 | honestly, in terms of how much productivity

00:04:03.920 | you're gonna get out of a second screen,

00:04:05.520 | in most cases, at least for me,

00:04:07.600 | I think it's incredibly important.

00:04:09.880 | So the one thing I will say this is,

00:04:12.640 | if you have a first generation MacBook

00:04:17.640 | where they have literally like the two USB ports

00:04:20.280 | and nothing else,

00:04:21.520 | this specific screen has to be attached

00:04:24.720 | to the power adapter.

00:04:27.160 | So you're probably gonna get like an hour,

00:04:28.920 | maybe two hours use out of it

00:04:30.680 | before you need to unattach it

00:04:32.480 | and plug in your actual power adapter

00:04:35.080 | to charge your MacBook again.

00:04:37.120 | But with the newer MacBooks,

00:04:39.520 | maybe the older ones as well,

00:04:41.280 | that's not really an issue anymore.

00:04:42.520 | So that's just to bear in mind.

00:04:44.560 | Okay, another really important part of the setup here

00:04:46.960 | is the separate keyboard and trackpad or a mouse, right?

00:04:51.960 | This is obviously, if you have your laptop stand,

00:04:55.560 | you need separate keyboard and a mouse or trackpad,

00:05:00.440 | but I think this is a pretty obvious one anyway.

00:05:03.600 | Okay, so other essential things

00:05:06.600 | that maybe are less obvious.

00:05:08.560 | So this power bank here,

00:05:10.360 | I think this is pretty important.

00:05:13.280 | I mean, it's a new thing for me

00:05:16.160 | and I've only used it a couple of times,

00:05:17.840 | but if you're traveling for long periods of time

00:05:21.400 | or you have unreliable electricity,

00:05:24.040 | this is really useful.

00:05:26.480 | So that's really good.

00:05:28.160 | I'd recommend you buy like a reliable one,

00:05:30.040 | like a good one, even if it's a bit more money

00:05:31.720 | because you're probably going to need it.

00:05:33.680 | All right, another super important thing

00:05:37.640 | is cable management,

00:05:39.680 | but not in the same way that you would manage the cables

00:05:42.440 | on your desk.

00:05:43.520 | So when you're traveling,

00:05:45.240 | you probably might not even realize,

00:05:47.000 | but you have a lot of cables.

00:05:48.120 | And so it's really important

00:05:51.400 | to have those organized in a way,

00:05:53.800 | otherwise they're just going to end up in your suitcase

00:05:55.800 | or your rucksack all over the place

00:05:57.840 | and it becomes an absolute nightmare, I promise.

00:06:00.400 | So I have this gibbet bag.

00:06:02.840 | I don't know what you call it.

00:06:05.320 | It's just a bag and you just put in all of your cables

00:06:07.920 | so you can see everything here, right?

00:06:10.160 | So yeah, this is useful.

00:06:12.520 | It's not full yet,

00:06:14.000 | but I have everything in here.

00:06:15.320 | So like I have all the normal cables.

00:06:17.560 | These are like what everyone's going to have,

00:06:19.160 | like your laptop charger, phone charger,

00:06:22.440 | a few other things.

00:06:24.480 | And then I like to keep other things in here.

00:06:25.960 | So these are the instructions for the new shotgun mic.

00:06:29.480 | It's better I just leave it there

00:06:31.360 | for when I do actually need to read them.

00:06:34.160 | And yeah, I have another lens for the camera here.

00:06:39.160 | So that's pretty cool.

00:06:42.720 | Just slides in there.

00:06:44.360 | The battery.

00:06:48.120 | So you can add a lot of things here, right?

00:06:50.920 | It doesn't have to just be charging cables.

00:06:53.640 | So I really mean it when I say this is super important.

00:06:57.200 | I have all the things here.

00:06:58.280 | This is one of the best.

00:06:59.680 | Okay, another thing super important is this bag.

00:07:03.560 | So obviously you can use any bag you want,

00:07:06.480 | but this is, it's a Peak Design bag.

00:07:09.800 | And you see loads of people, like camera people using them,

00:07:14.080 | which obviously helps me because I have a camera,

00:07:17.160 | but it's useful for like anything

00:07:20.120 | because it's really well-built bag.

00:07:23.640 | When I bought this bag, like it's expensive,

00:07:26.640 | but it felt like I'd never had a good bag before.

00:07:30.160 | As soon as I got this, it's really useful.

00:07:32.880 | So you have all of these different compartments.

00:07:36.720 | So you see in here, you have these different compartments.

00:07:41.720 | You have the top bit here for,

00:07:43.840 | I just usually put like a water bottle

00:07:45.600 | and some random things in there.

00:07:47.640 | Here, I usually put my camera.

00:07:50.160 | And then in the bottom here, you can fit notepads,

00:07:53.560 | a book, other things if you really want.

00:07:56.240 | And then on the sides,

00:07:58.840 | you have all these other things as well,

00:08:00.880 | like the cables usually, or before they were for cables.

00:08:05.640 | Now I use this, so it's not really as needed.

00:08:10.640 | So for example, this, my sand will usually go

00:08:17.520 | in the side here.

00:08:20.280 | So I just kind of throw this in.

00:08:22.960 | Water bottle.

00:08:26.680 | It's either on the side or on the inside here.

00:08:30.720 | So either in here, or I can also put it over here.

00:08:35.720 | So at the moment, I also have this

00:08:40.440 | because we're doing like a road trip

00:08:43.080 | kind of around Europe at the moment.

00:08:45.040 | I'm not driving to Madrid, by the way,

00:08:46.720 | that's on a flight just for the conference,

00:08:49.520 | but everywhere else we're driving.

00:08:53.240 | So this is just, it's just a light.

00:08:57.040 | I figured if the car ever broke down,

00:08:59.840 | this would be really useful.

00:09:01.240 | I haven't needed it so far, but just a headlight,

00:09:06.320 | nothing special.

00:09:07.400 | But what is useful is in here,

00:09:13.280 | or is it the other side?

00:09:17.160 | Might be the other side.

00:09:18.360 | It is here.

00:09:23.000 | So they have this little weird thing here.

00:09:25.720 | I don't know how well you can see that.

00:09:27.240 | There's this little cable, like elastic cable thing.

00:09:31.000 | But if you don't want anyone to see your fancy water bottle,

00:09:35.160 | this is an expensive water bottle,

00:09:39.360 | which is kind of stupid, but it's fine.

00:09:41.720 | You use this.

00:09:42.560 | So you just throw it over and it makes it,

00:09:44.720 | mainly it's to make sure nothing falls out

00:09:48.360 | if you're, I don't know, walking around

00:09:51.560 | with your bag upside down or something.

00:09:53.120 | I don't know.

00:09:54.120 | And then second screen.

00:09:56.080 | I don't always put this in my bag.

00:09:58.360 | It depends.

00:09:59.200 | Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

00:10:00.800 | Probably, I don't even know if I'm going to take it to,

00:10:04.960 | I probably won't even take this to Madrid.

00:10:07.240 | But if I were taking it, it goes in the back here

00:10:09.400 | because we have all these multiple components, compartments.

00:10:14.400 | So,

00:10:16.080 | see in here, it's nothing special to be honest,

00:10:22.440 | but it does fit a lot of stuff in,

00:10:23.840 | which is pretty cool.

00:10:25.440 | So this, actually, I'm probably not going to leave it

00:10:28.160 | in there.

00:10:29.000 | But these, I do.

00:10:31.760 | So again, being light, being thin,

00:10:34.240 | these are really good to just put in here.

00:10:36.360 | You can put the cable bag in here.

00:10:40.920 | I'm going to this time.

00:10:42.680 | I just have all my cables with me,

00:10:44.400 | but you really don't need to.

00:10:47.560 | Usually I will just keep like essential cables.

00:10:50.600 | Like if I feel, if we're going for a long trip,

00:10:53.280 | like if you ever fly to Asia,

00:10:57.680 | usually a couple of flights,

00:10:59.880 | at least during the past two years,

00:11:01.920 | it's been a couple of flights to get there.

00:11:03.920 | And it means that you're going to be traveling for ages,

00:11:07.280 | like more than a day in some cases.

00:11:11.160 | So we're taking a laptop charger in this bag,

00:11:14.480 | separately to the gibbet bag,

00:11:16.280 | that has what I've been doing,

00:11:18.320 | and then just putting the gibbet bag in like a suitcase.

00:11:22.880 | Laptop goes straight in here.

00:11:25.280 | And usually, despite us traveling

00:11:31.960 | for the most of the past two years,

00:11:34.200 | Lara still doesn't have like a decent laptop bag,

00:11:37.520 | 'cause she just likes to have like this tiny backpack,

00:11:41.200 | which is, I'm not joking,

00:11:42.680 | about this size.

00:11:46.280 | So you can't fit anything inside it.

00:11:48.080 | Or she has a handbag,

00:11:49.880 | and neither of those you can put your laptop in.

00:11:52.120 | So she usually, I usually end up carrying that in this bag.

00:11:56.240 | So two MacBooks, the smaller dimension ones,

00:12:01.240 | it's like 13 inch maybe,

00:12:04.040 | they both go in here and it's fine.

00:12:06.960 | Okay, and yeah, that's how I pack everything.

00:12:12.720 | So this works pretty much anywhere,

00:12:16.240 | at least for me, it works.

00:12:20.560 | So that's really good.

00:12:22.200 | It's all super lightweight, as you can see,

00:12:25.240 | there's hardly anything there.

00:12:26.840 | But with that,

00:12:27.680 | you are pretty much going to be able to work anywhere,

00:12:30.880 | which today's world is pretty useful

00:12:34.440 | for a lot of people, I think.

00:12:35.960 | So yeah, that's it for this video.

00:12:40.960 | I hope it's been useful,

00:12:42.840 | and I will see you again in the next one.

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