It’s the time of year when spending time with family and loved ones is on everyone’s minds. I know I’m glad to get all those special times with my DH (Dear Husband) as we get and decorate our tree and celebrate the solstice. We share our lives, our food, and our bed, but the one thing we don’t share is a desk.
Nope, no way, no how. I was just discussing this topic with a dear friend who recently moved in with her partner. They’re in the process of navigating and merging households (as 40-something adults), and the remaining challenge is that they are both sharing a large table as their workspace.
If both partners work outside the home, and the home workspace is only used occasionally for bill-paying or a rare late-night work project, then a shared desk might be viable. However, as someone who has spent over a decade working from home, I have to say sharing a desk feels on par with sharing a toothbrush or underwear. In other words… a really bad idea.
5 Reasons for Dedicated Workspace
(i.e. Why my desk is my world)
As a life-long entrepreneur, I have rarely experienced that “going to the office” lifestyle when you leave your home life behind and have your desk, career, and colleagues waiting for you. (Yes, I had a couple jobs in grad school that qualified, so I’m not completely unfamiliar.) However, since 2003 my work world has been built in my home and online, which means that having a dedicated work space (i.e. desk) to settle into is my only refuge. So Reason #1 why dedicated workspace is important: It’s the ONLY space that’s “mine”.
This “working from home” experience is increasingly common for many entrepreneurs and telecommuters, which has made this question of dedicated vs. shared desk space a vibrant question for many families. In the last couple years, we’ve had several opportunities (particularly during last year’s unbelievable snow storms) to find out how life becomes different when we’re both working from home, which illuminated a few more of the reasons for dedicate workspace that I will share here.
We have never tried to both work from the same desk (for anything more than sharing a table at a coffee shop for a couple hours). If you saw my DH’s desk you would know immediately why that could become a major issue in our marriage since I prefer to see more surface than stuff, and he’s rather the opposite. A perfect illustration of Reason #2: My way of working and your way of working may be VERY different.
Similarly, coming from a background as a professional organizer, I prefer to ensure that everything I need and use has a specific home. In seconds I can reach for my stapler, and I know it will always be in the same place. Which means that I rarely ever spend seconds or mental cycles hunting for things that I need. All my desk tools are consistently close at hand, so there’s rarely a “What happened to the scissors?” conversation which happens so frequently when workspace gets shared. Reason #3: If we each have our own tools, then we can each keep them how we prefer.
During last year’s snow storms we discovered why even being in the same room to work was a non-starter most of the time. Both of us have jobs that involve spending a fair amount of time on the phone, Skype, or GoToMeeting working with our clients or customers, which means that we need to be able to have a private conversation multiple times each day. Therefore, we frequently had to relocate workspaces in order to give each other visual and auditory privacy as well. Reason #4: Privacy and ability to focus are important.
Now, allow me to say that I have discovered how much I love working with my DH as we build elements of Chosen Course together. In fact, working together on projects has become a particular joy and something we plan to do more of in future. However, I think it’s partially because we have learned how to honor each other’s workspace and style that makes our coming together for periods of collaborative work more enjoyable. One of my happiest memories was sitting together at a coffee shop in California working on some landing pages for an upcoming launch. Reason #5: Dedicated, private workspace makes coming together special and intentional.
Next Actions
I share my story with you as a point of reflection. Some new entrepreneurs or telecommuters underestimate the importance of having a reliable, dedicated workspace, and it creates unnecessary stress and strain on their relationships. If that’s you, then perhaps you’ll want to add a desk or private work space to your holiday gift list? Or, maybe it’s your loved one who’s working from home more, and you can offer them the gift of dedicated workspace for the New Year.
Either way, you can start by asking the question “What could make this situation even better?” and give yourself the chance to explore the answers. Perhaps your holiday will include a bit of re-organizing!
