(upbeat music) Today, I'm going to talk about the way that I work in terms of working from anywhere. So for the past two years, pretty much since we had the first COVID lockdowns in the UK, I've been working remotely. In those two years, I've learned a lot about working from anywhere, and in particular, the sort of things that you need to consider or the things that you need to take with you when you're working from anywhere.

Because in reality, it's very different when you are working at home at your desk. It's you have built that workspace to suit you, or even in an office, that workspace, maybe it's not built to suit you, but it's built to suit working. When you start working remotely from different places, the chances are most places you go, or a lot of places you go, are not really going to have good workspaces.

That's just how they are, because most places are not really built for working. So you really have to get a little bit creative sometimes, but you can avoid that to an extent if you actually take the right kit, if you take pretty much a remote desk setup, okay? So I'm gonna show you my remote desk setup, and we'll just talk through it.

Now, obviously, I know that not everyone is able to work remotely, but I think in the past two years, it has become much more common, and I'm sure at least a few of you are probably working remotely, either full-time or at least part-time. So yeah, I hope this is useful.

This sort of setup for me seems to be working really well. I can pretty much go anywhere now and make myself a little workspace, which is pretty cool. Okay, so what you can see here is pretty much my workspace, and obviously, as I do all these YouTube videos all the time, I also have this big microphone here, which this week, I have replaced, or not replaced, but I now have an alternative microphone, which should make it a little bit easier for traveling, because taking this massive road stand that you see here around with me, it's not a lot of fun.

So yeah, this shotgun mic should be a lot better for me. But of course, most people are not really gonna need a microphone, so you don't need to worry about that anyway. So instead, what you actually need is what you can see here, pretty much. So I have this little stand here, and this is super important, because you're gonna be working in a lot of weird places, and most of them are not going to have good workspace setups.

So you need your laptop to ideally be at your eye level. This is really important. And another thing that's super, super crucial about this is how it packs down to pretty much nothing. You fit in this little bag here, and it's incredibly lightweight. I don't remember how lightweight exactly, but it weighs nothing.

I just put it in my bag and go, it's great. So another thing that's so important, at least for me, a second screen, okay? So I have this second screen. Obviously, your mic doesn't come with a second screen. I've seen some that do attach to it, so maybe that's worth looking into, but they're super expensive.

So this screen here, honestly, in terms of how much productivity you're gonna get out of a second screen, in most cases, at least for me, I think it's incredibly important. So the one thing I will say this is, if you have a first generation MacBook where they have literally like the two USB ports and nothing else, this specific screen has to be attached to the power adapter.

So you're probably gonna get like an hour, maybe two hours use out of it before you need to unattach it and plug in your actual power adapter to charge your MacBook again. But with the newer MacBooks, maybe the older ones as well, that's not really an issue anymore. So that's just to bear in mind.

Okay, another really important part of the setup here is the separate keyboard and trackpad or a mouse, right? This is obviously, if you have your laptop stand, you need separate keyboard and a mouse or trackpad, but I think this is a pretty obvious one anyway. Okay, so other essential things that maybe are less obvious.

So this power bank here, I think this is pretty important. I mean, it's a new thing for me and I've only used it a couple of times, but if you're traveling for long periods of time or you have unreliable electricity, this is really useful. So that's really good. I'd recommend you buy like a reliable one, like a good one, even if it's a bit more money because you're probably going to need it.

All right, another super important thing is cable management, but not in the same way that you would manage the cables on your desk. So when you're traveling, you probably might not even realize, but you have a lot of cables. And so it's really important to have those organized in a way, otherwise they're just going to end up in your suitcase or your rucksack all over the place and it becomes an absolute nightmare, I promise.

So I have this gibbet bag. I don't know what you call it. It's just a bag and you just put in all of your cables so you can see everything here, right? So yeah, this is useful. It's not full yet, but I have everything in here. So like I have all the normal cables.

These are like what everyone's going to have, like your laptop charger, phone charger, a few other things. And then I like to keep other things in here. So these are the instructions for the new shotgun mic. It's better I just leave it there for when I do actually need to read them.

And yeah, I have another lens for the camera here. So that's pretty cool. Just slides in there. The battery. So you can add a lot of things here, right? It doesn't have to just be charging cables. So I really mean it when I say this is super important. I have all the things here.

This is one of the best. Okay, another thing super important is this bag. So obviously you can use any bag you want, but this is, it's a Peak Design bag. And you see loads of people, like camera people using them, which obviously helps me because I have a camera, but it's useful for like anything because it's really well-built bag.

When I bought this bag, like it's expensive, but it felt like I'd never had a good bag before. As soon as I got this, it's really useful. So you have all of these different compartments. So you see in here, you have these different compartments. You have the top bit here for, I just usually put like a water bottle and some random things in there.

Here, I usually put my camera. And then in the bottom here, you can fit notepads, a book, other things if you really want. And then on the sides, you have all these other things as well, like the cables usually, or before they were for cables. Now I use this, so it's not really as needed.

So for example, this, my sand will usually go in the side here. So I just kind of throw this in. Water bottle. It's either on the side or on the inside here. So either in here, or I can also put it over here. So at the moment, I also have this because we're doing like a road trip kind of around Europe at the moment.

I'm not driving to Madrid, by the way, that's on a flight just for the conference, but everywhere else we're driving. So this is just, it's just a light. I figured if the car ever broke down, this would be really useful. I haven't needed it so far, but just a headlight, nothing special.

But what is useful is in here, or is it the other side? Might be the other side. It is here. So they have this little weird thing here. I don't know how well you can see that. There's this little cable, like elastic cable thing. But if you don't want anyone to see your fancy water bottle, this is an expensive water bottle, which is kind of stupid, but it's fine.

You use this. So you just throw it over and it makes it, mainly it's to make sure nothing falls out if you're, I don't know, walking around with your bag upside down or something. I don't know. And then second screen. I don't always put this in my bag. It depends.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Probably, I don't even know if I'm going to take it to, I probably won't even take this to Madrid. But if I were taking it, it goes in the back here because we have all these multiple components, compartments. So, see in here, it's nothing special to be honest, but it does fit a lot of stuff in, which is pretty cool.

So this, actually, I'm probably not going to leave it in there. But these, I do. So again, being light, being thin, these are really good to just put in here. You can put the cable bag in here. I'm going to this time. I just have all my cables with me, but you really don't need to.

Usually I will just keep like essential cables. Like if I feel, if we're going for a long trip, like if you ever fly to Asia, usually a couple of flights, at least during the past two years, it's been a couple of flights to get there. And it means that you're going to be traveling for ages, like more than a day in some cases.

So we're taking a laptop charger in this bag, separately to the gibbet bag, that has what I've been doing, and then just putting the gibbet bag in like a suitcase. Laptop goes straight in here. And usually, despite us traveling for the most of the past two years, Lara still doesn't have like a decent laptop bag, 'cause she just likes to have like this tiny backpack, which is, I'm not joking, about this size.

So you can't fit anything inside it. Or she has a handbag, and neither of those you can put your laptop in. So she usually, I usually end up carrying that in this bag. So two MacBooks, the smaller dimension ones, it's like 13 inch maybe, they both go in here and it's fine.

Okay, and yeah, that's how I pack everything. So this works pretty much anywhere, at least for me, it works. So that's really good. It's all super lightweight, as you can see, there's hardly anything there. But with that, you are pretty much going to be able to work anywhere, which today's world is pretty useful for a lot of people, I think.

So yeah, that's it for this video. I hope it's been useful, and I will see you again in the next one.