My study is modest: just a spare bedroom that serves as a home office, sanctuary, and musical practice room... and with a few cheap bookshelves to turn it into a "library" as well.
Still, I have not always had the means nor the space for such a luxury, and it's one of those things that I never take for granted.
This describes my study perfectly. It truly is a sanctuary. For the most part I avoid using it for work, so that it can serve as a complete escape from that part of my life.
As I age I realize how much of life's moods are intertwined with physical places and their emotional associations based on what I do in that place every day.
> We must reserve a back room [une arriereboutique] all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude
And thus the man-cave was born :)
My dream house would have a big study with books covering the walls floor to ceiling and a big wooden desk in the middle, like the one in Palazzo Revoltella in Trieste[0][1] (by the way, goo see the Museo Rivoltella if you ever go to Trieste).
The current small room I work from is something already. At least I can close the door when I call customers and team-mates. Heaps better than when I had to work from the living room. But a bit more room (and not having to share the space with the pantry) would be nice.
When I was in undergrad, I worked with Barry Wellman (one of the early proponents of Social Network Analysis). One of his research projects back in the 1970s-90s was interviewing people about their home offices, and they'd have them take photos of their desk, computer setup, etc. Really cool stuff to see how people decide to focus. I wonder how much it's changed?
This is a nice article going in the other chronological direction!
This is a really interesting question because I think the definition of a home office has changed quite a bit.
In North America, there was a period in the 80s and 90s where the Desktop PC was very much a shared device. You'd have it sitting somewhere like the living room or basement, maybe near the TV, you'd have a landline phone next to it, etc.
I think a lot of families had those, but it's very different from the idea of a "home office" where you have a separate/isolated work room.
The Official Preppy Handbook (tongue in cheek, of course, but its observations are often basically accurate) describe a dedicated office as a fixture of (what Fussell would classify as) upper-middle-class homes. Nb that class has historically had more flexibility on working from home than the rest of us, and generally been accustomed to looser restrictions and more freedom to set their own agendas (this has shifted with the intrusion of MBA- and finance-types into the strongholds of this class, like universities and hospitals, but that’s another topic) That account was published in 1980.
My background is a mix of Fussellian mid- and upper-prole and regular ol’ middle, and an office space, if only a roll top desk tucked in a corner, but a room if space allowed, has always been a feature of my parents’ homes.
Pre-computer, that’s where paperwork and mail and other records that needed to be stored and worked with too long to live on the kitchen table (see: home space use studies, which spawned the misguided trend of building desks into kitchens in American houses) went. When desktop computers became a thing, that’s where the family computer went. (Yes, kids, even when we got the Internet at home, it was still located in a physical place you had to go and remain to keep using it—what a change smartphones have been!)
This version of the home office as a hub for personal document and important-paper-stuff management is basically dying, which is why it may seem surprising they ever existed. I don’t even need a laptop for most of this stuff, let alone an office—nearly everything important happens on my phone, and that’s becoming more normal. I don’t even need a kitchen table for it.
Anecdotally, my grandfather had a more extensive home office than I do. He never took work home with him from the company office, which he exclusively worked from. This would’ve been the 80’s when he was employed as an engineer manager in aerospace
My study is modest: just a spare bedroom that serves as a home office, sanctuary, and musical practice room... and with a few cheap bookshelves to turn it into a "library" as well.
Still, I have not always had the means nor the space for such a luxury, and it's one of those things that I never take for granted.
This describes my study perfectly. It truly is a sanctuary. For the most part I avoid using it for work, so that it can serve as a complete escape from that part of my life.
I am thinking of making this transition as well.
As I age I realize how much of life's moods are intertwined with physical places and their emotional associations based on what I do in that place every day.
> We must reserve a back room [une arriereboutique] all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude
And thus the man-cave was born :)
My dream house would have a big study with books covering the walls floor to ceiling and a big wooden desk in the middle, like the one in Palazzo Revoltella in Trieste[0][1] (by the way, goo see the Museo Rivoltella if you ever go to Trieste).
The current small room I work from is something already. At least I can close the door when I call customers and team-mates. Heaps better than when I had to work from the living room. But a bit more room (and not having to share the space with the pantry) would be nice.
[0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/47/20/3347206a9602a062ee8f...
[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/04/99/fb/0499fb98b756a2511c40...
Add a copy of Library Genesis in a rack in a closet.
When I was in undergrad, I worked with Barry Wellman (one of the early proponents of Social Network Analysis). One of his research projects back in the 1970s-90s was interviewing people about their home offices, and they'd have them take photos of their desk, computer setup, etc. Really cool stuff to see how people decide to focus. I wonder how much it's changed?
This is a nice article going in the other chronological direction!
Did many people have home offices in that period?
This is a really interesting question because I think the definition of a home office has changed quite a bit.
In North America, there was a period in the 80s and 90s where the Desktop PC was very much a shared device. You'd have it sitting somewhere like the living room or basement, maybe near the TV, you'd have a landline phone next to it, etc.
I think a lot of families had those, but it's very different from the idea of a "home office" where you have a separate/isolated work room.
The Official Preppy Handbook (tongue in cheek, of course, but its observations are often basically accurate) describe a dedicated office as a fixture of (what Fussell would classify as) upper-middle-class homes. Nb that class has historically had more flexibility on working from home than the rest of us, and generally been accustomed to looser restrictions and more freedom to set their own agendas (this has shifted with the intrusion of MBA- and finance-types into the strongholds of this class, like universities and hospitals, but that’s another topic) That account was published in 1980.
My background is a mix of Fussellian mid- and upper-prole and regular ol’ middle, and an office space, if only a roll top desk tucked in a corner, but a room if space allowed, has always been a feature of my parents’ homes.
Pre-computer, that’s where paperwork and mail and other records that needed to be stored and worked with too long to live on the kitchen table (see: home space use studies, which spawned the misguided trend of building desks into kitchens in American houses) went. When desktop computers became a thing, that’s where the family computer went. (Yes, kids, even when we got the Internet at home, it was still located in a physical place you had to go and remain to keep using it—what a change smartphones have been!)
This version of the home office as a hub for personal document and important-paper-stuff management is basically dying, which is why it may seem surprising they ever existed. I don’t even need a laptop for most of this stuff, let alone an office—nearly everything important happens on my phone, and that’s becoming more normal. I don’t even need a kitchen table for it.
Anecdotally, my grandfather had a more extensive home office than I do. He never took work home with him from the company office, which he exclusively worked from. This would’ve been the 80’s when he was employed as an engineer manager in aerospace
Perhaps more common than now, even with the resurgence from remote working, I'd say.
A man's desk/workbench or an equivalent is a glimpse into his thoughts; everything exists and is where it is for a reason.
Any time I look inside my SSDs and HDDs I am satisfactorily horrified.
> If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? -- Einstein (but probably not really)
No desk is truly empty, as each desk contains lots of spacetime, as well as particle-antiparticle pairs which exist only briefly.
Tons of Zero Point Energy to weight on when using such desk
My thoughts are a jumble of everything I’ve thought about and messed around with in the past 3 months or so?
Are you me?
Very much worth reading. Excellent. I didn't know publicdomainreview before either.