The Irony Of Building A Perfect Desk While Not Working

So here's the thing: After stepping away from tech leadership to take a year off, what's the first thing I do? Spend weeks meticulously crafting the perfect desk setup. Because apparently, the best time to build your dream workspace is when you're not actually working. 🤔

My self-built standing desk with garden view

But let me tell you about this beauty:

• A convertible standing desk overlooking the garden (not yet beautiful, it's February, after all)

• A clean oak desktop where plants share space with monitors

• A custom-built monitor stand that makes cables disappear

• And yes, I even figured out how to hide a printer…

Collage with different pictures and details of my office view

The irony isn't lost on me. Here I am, engineering the perfect work environment right after deciding to take a break from work.

But here's the thing - transforming my physical workspace is turning out to be a powerful way to reset my mental space. Like clearing the cache of my mind, if you will. The old desk carried years of startup stress, late-night coding sessions, and acquisition meetings. This new space? It's as fresh as the garden view it faces.

So yes, maybe building a desk during my sabbatical wasn't the most obvious first move. But at least when inspiration strikes, I'll have the cleanest, most thoughtfully designed spot to ignore it from…