Things we couldn’t live without

Pancakes are finished and Lent begins, what could we not live without to keep us working?

As Lent begins today, at GRIN we’ve been thinking about what one thing has become indispensable when it comes to our work, that we would not be able to give up for Lent. This has become even more important as we continue to be work from home and need those little things to help make it all a little easier on ourselves. Here’s what the team said:

Scott – My additional computer monitors

The initial lockdown really rocketed me into finally renovating the box room into a functioning office. With this I seized the opportunity to fit two monitors onto my desk and remove the need to constantly tab between windows. Some might say a word doc on a 27″ screen is overkill. I’d agree, but I’m not going to stop anytime soon!

Claire – My laptop

The one thing I could not forgo from my current working life is my laptop, working from home/ at my bubble’s currently, whilst my house is a building site and being renovated – I need to be able to move from space to space to find a quiet spot and this ensures I can work anywhere! Which is a god send… When I say anywhere, I obviously mean within the two households i’m limited to during lockdown, if only this included the beach!

Ryan – My new desk space

Gone are the days where I’d work on my MacBook Pro at the dining table. There’s something about working having your own dedicated work space that makes working from home much more enjoyable. I also don’t think i’ll ever be able to go back to working on a 15inch laptop screen now I’ve got used to the 27inch Mac screen life. Oh also, mouse > trackpad.

Jen – Tea and Teams!

Video calls have become the norm for most businesses in the WFH environment. They ensure everyone is connected and provide an essential touchpoint in this bizarre and quite isolating time, and also enable GRIN to run in the collaborative and creative way the agency is accustomed to. That… and a morning brew to start the day off right… Nobody wants to talk to me before the tea that’s for sure!

Jon – After Effects plugin-ins

One thing I couldn’t live without is the Plug-in ‘Flow’ for After Effects, it’s the perfect tool to cut down time and saves getting all confused with the wavy editor lines. ‘Flow’ will change the way you work with graph editor the moment you launch it. I love it, it’s a tool that I use everyday and I would choose to give up Pepsi before it!

Phil – A home office

For someone who has worked at home for the last 12 years I was pretty well prepared for the Lockdown way of life. For me you have to have your own little office at home, not on the kitchen table, not in the lounge. The distractions are too tempting. Also have a lock on the office door so it feels like you can shut the work away in your house, it’s a strange thing but really works.

One thing I couldn’t live without in the home office is music, it’s a solitary life so the tunes really help!

Gareth – Spotify

For me the one thing I couldn’t live without is Spotify. If this question was in general and not work related, I would have still answered music. But now more than ever I need the convenience of having the app on my machine, the sheer size of the library to choose from (so I don’t get bored) and the ability to follow other people and see what they’re listening to. Oh and podcasts! I was never into them before the last year and they’ve been a lifeline to sanity for the last 12 months.

Sarah – My workspace

I eventually realised that it wasn’t important to have an actual office to work from home – just your own space! So after several back aches due to dining room chairs and constant interruptions from my girls at home with online learning, I created a very narrow working space in a spare room, which now allows me to ‘go to work’ and ‘leave work’ in the loosest sense but it works for me.

You might have spotted a theme as you read through that? What can we say, we’re a close knit team who all value a good workspace. When it comes from working from home we’ll welcome anything that makes it more comfortable and keeps us on track.