My work-from-home setup in 2024! 🪑
Which doubles as an inspiration list for Christmas gifts!
At the end of 2022 I wrote a newsletter edition about my work-from-home setup.
It was around Christmas time, so I thought it could help with gifts. Surprisingly, it became one of the most popular posts of the year, and I spent the following week replying to readers who asked for clarifications about various items.
Fast forward to today, I have been working on a bigger and better edition of it, updated for 2024. I will recommend and review 20+ items (up from 10 last time). These include both the ones I have been using myself (old and new), and some popular ones from the community.
I will also organize things into categories:
🪑 Desk & Health — the standing desk routine and everything around it.
🎙️ Video / Audio — the setup for recording audio, video, or simply having calls.
🖥️ Tech — display, docks, chargers, and more.
➡️ Next up — new, promising items I am considering buying.
💬 From the community — recommended pieces from readers. From simple ones, like monitor lights, to wild ones, like the XReal glasses.
Also, I am not affiliated with any of these products and I don’t make any money from doing this. It’s just genuine recommendations from myself and the community.
Let’s dive in! 👇
🪑 Desk + Health
Before we start, here is a full picture of my desk, with some notes about the main items 👇 let’s look at them one by one.
1) Fully Jarvis Standing Desk
Last year I recommended using a standing desk, and I still stand (hehe) by that.
I have been using it for about 1.5 years now. As of today I stand the whole morning, and in the afternoon I alternate between sitting and standing. The breakdown is around 60% standing and 40% sitting.
Standing helps me in two main ways:
⬆️ Posture — I have suffered from bad posture my whole life. This improved a lot over the last year, and I even got friends who told me (unsolicited) that I looked taller.
🔋 Energy & Focus — I just feel better throughout the day. Whenever I sit for a long time, I tend to become lazy and unfocused, whereas this never happens when I am standing. Now I am doing my best work while standing, which has been a welcome surprise.
As for the desk itself, I use a Fully Jarvis. Last year Fully has been acquired by Hermann Miller and unfortunately many products and geographies were discontinued. You can still buy desks, but not in Europe for example.
However, standing desks have become quite popular and you have many alternatives. Here are the most popular ones:
Autonomous — Autonomous has become a household name for office furniture. It makes everything from desks to chairs to accessories, and also acts as a reseller for many other great office brands.
Flexispot — if you are in Europe, Flexispot has a pretty wild variety of desks and configurations, it is well reviewed, and has great value for money.
IKEA — yes, IKEA makes standing desks, too. They are more basic compared to other brands, but they are sturdy and work well. I bought one to create a second working space for friends and collaborators, and I can’t complain.
2) Herman Miller Sayl
For when I am sitting, I replaced the Ikea active stool I was using last year with a Hermann Miller Sayl.
First, about the stool: when you research standing desks you hear a lot about the benefits of using a stool: it keeps your spine active, prevents bad posture when you are sitting, etc.
I don’t know — these benefits never really clicked for me. The stool isn’t quite comfortable and, when I have been standing for a long time and I switch to sitting, I want to be comfortable.
So I have looked at many chairs and the Sayl hits a sweet spot for me: it has the benefits of an office chair — adjustable, good support, etc — it is good-looking and not too office-y for my taste, and it is not overly expensive.