> 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 we moved office from one with actual rooms with max 4 people in it to an open space I cried a little internally. Our boss proceeded to extol the virtues of an open space for exchange of ideas and collaboration. Guess who was a stable occupant of one of the conference rooms after less than one month and stopped coming to the office altogether after a while.
Working from home now is bliss. If I'll ever start working in a shared workspace again I want an actual office.
I remember seeing a guy selling his book about practical software engineering and project management at a trade show some 25 years ago. One of his claims was that he had a statistic that showed that a closeable door and muteable telephone resulted in 10x productivity for programmers / sw-engs.
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!
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
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.
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.
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...
reply