February 2021

February has been a pretty tough month. I’ve really struggled with motivation and focus both at work and in my personal life. I think the combination of a twelfth month in lockdown, the bleak Welsh weather and some lingering life admin left over from my move back from Munich, have all just knocked me off balance a bit.

This month has been my first full month with my standing desk. At the end of January I bought a Fully Jarvis sit/stand desk. I’d never used a standing desk before so I spent a long time researching different models and brands, and most of all the actual benefits of a standing desk over a normal desk, especially as they’re significantly more expensive. I have chronic lower back problems so I’m regularly standing up and walking around the room just to stretch my joints and stop my back from seizing up (I know it sounds like I’m 80 years old but I’m actually only 28…), so I thought a standing desk would help me achieve this without interrupting my work flow too much.

1 month in and I absolutely love it. I probably spend around 30% of my time standing, although this would probably be higher if I hadn’t bought an ergonomic desk chair at the same time. The ability to switch from sitting to standing within seconds is amazing; it really feels like two different working environments which is great for helping me maintain focus. I opted for a 160cm x 80cm desktop which gives me plenty of space for my Macbook, a monitor and my iPad when I’m sketching wireframes.

The complete desk setup wasn’t cheap, but it’s something that I’ll keep for a long time and use a lot. I’ll be working from home indefinitely, even post-pandemic, so investing in a decent home office setup (that doubles as a Lego building station) seemed like a pretty grown-up use of my money

Work life

I think this month has been the first time that I’ve felt burnt-out. At the very least it’s the first time I’ve properly acknowledged it. I’m grateful to work for a company that lets us take time off when we need it, so I took that opportunity to take a couple of days at the end of the month to clear my head and recharge my batteries. I know that losing control of my to-do lists has been one cause of this burnout so I’m going to spend the beginning of March getting back into a good rhythm with them to hopefully bring me back on track

I spent a lot of time this month working on our design system and components in Figma. It’s something I’d been putting off for a while as I couldn’t justify spending hours building components when I could be scoping new features or testing features ready for deployment. I knew that it would save me a lot of time in the long run so I finally forced myself to spend some time on it. There’s still a long way to go but I made a lot of good progress

Some things I’ve been enjoying

I’ve been loving this Focus Drum and Bass playlist and this Trip Hop / Downtempo playlist for focussed work sessions

My parents and I have been working through the MCU in chronological order which has been great fun, especially to see my mum finally putting all the pieces together. We’ve also created a Friday ritual of watching Wandavision with our lunch which has been amazing - fantastic series

I set myself the goal this year to publish monthly updates for the whole year, and here’s my second one 🎉 How’s your February been? What have you been enjoying this month? Tweet me or send me a DM @Marsh931 . Until next month, hope to see you then! Alex