Working from home & smart home studio tour

Most of us are stuck at home right now. And about 30% of us in the US are able to work from home ... but many are doing it for the first time on a consistent basis. I thought it might be interesting to share with you how I’ve been working from home for the past couple of years ... it might give you some ideas ... and show you some of the tech and gear I use in my studio. Plus I’ve got some home automation tricks I use to make working from home easier.

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▻ Audio file(s) provided by Epidemic Sound

[TheRealLaughingGravy]

First of all, what made me take note of your channel was the wonderful video and audio quality. I just love how your videos look and sound, and I especially appreciate that you don't have a giant microphone obscuring half your face. The audio is beautiful. It's interesting, but not surprising, to see the care you take behind the scenes to create your videos. It really shows in the finished product.

As for working at home, I was able to do that on a semi-regular basis for ten or fifteen years, and your tip about getting up at the normal time and acting like you're going to the office is really important. I never had the space to have a separate room that I could devote just to work, however. That would have been so helpful. Not getting distracted was a constant struggle.

I think splurging on the best monitor and the best keyboard (if you write a lot) is money well spent. Most of us, unless we do a lot of video work or are professional gamers, have a computer that is way too powerful for what we really need, but we likely have a monitor and keyboard (and mouse!) that don't serve us well. You look at the monitor and use the keyboard and mouse virtually non-stop all day long. You should pay as much as you can afford, and maybe more, to get the best ones possible for the work you do.

[pauldeconinck]

Excellent video. Good advice about maintaining a routine. I've been working from home off and on for about 16 years. The key is to keep your routine. It helps in maintaining your productivity while you're working, but also maintaining the work space away from the home space. So you don't get distracted. But also so you don't find yourself working at 7pm. At the end of the day shut off the door and turn off the phone and computer and go home. Just as important.

[kristhompson]

I work in commercial television and have done for nearly 20 plus years as a Location Sound recordist, and also in the area of On-site (OB) Board-casts for major Sporting networks in New Zealand and Auzzie. Sourcing your kit and staying in front of the curve is very difficult not to mention getting bang for buck. The business model for owning cameras is the hardest..
Your content is outstanding, research, and in-depth homework all demonstrates you focus and self discipline, running from home is not an easy task. I am a solo dad since my wife past away from breast cancer and have Daddy Daddy Daddy in my ear all day, now that is a challenge I can tell you.. almost a show-stopper during lockdown.
I am all about maintaining production standards and your posts are a joy to watch so thank you. So many channels are difficult to stomach, so well done sir again for your efforts to raise the game,
The EV 20's are the bomb as I have a large selection of high end mics and the ElectroVoice is still one of my favs for VO work, mine is a older refurbished almost vintage unit, running with a Cloudlifter Z impedance converter, There is a reason why Thom Yorke from RadioHead and so many other artist use them is the studio. You have just got to luv that sound.
Kris

[JohanNordberg]

Been working for home for many years now and I agree with your ideas. I've always made sure to have a nice chair, a good large monitor and external keyboard and mouse. This helps a lot. Recently I also got a better desk. My home office is a part of our living room which has pros and cons. On the positive side it's nice to not work in your bedroom that I did before. It's also easier to work and be kind of social with the family at the same time, since I prefer to work in like three sessions per day, but not as many hours per session.

It took some time for the rest of the family to see my work more or less as if I'm not at home. That includes kids wondering why they had to be at daycare or wife expecting me to care about domestic stuff during work hours. Don't see any of that as a problem now. Actually I find it easier that I can make sure the Neato Botvac is running while I take a walk, I can have do shopping when there's almost no other people doing shopping and fix dinner before my wife comes home.

I think my best tips for working successfully at home is:
- Have a good desk, chair and lights
- Use an external large monitor and a good keyboard and mouse
- Start working early (I start working when my kids leave for school)
- Make goal for the day and stick to them. This allows you to actually do work instead of playing Xbox, but it also allows you to stop early if finishing quickly. There are ALWAYS more things to do and you never get done. But make sure to know when to stop for the day.
- Take walks and exercise.

And, if you're self employed, don't forget to sometimes take advantage of that. Take a long nice lunch. Go see a movie in the middle of the day. Take a "workation", like a ski-trip where you ski during the day and work during the nights.

But what ever you do.. Don't open YouTube and first spend time watching this channel and then even more time writing a long comment... ;)

[brianf]

Hey Matt - thanks for the great tips on working from home! I'm a school teacher, and recently have been working at home more this semester. I gathered a lot of good information about some setups to think about.


One thing that I've done, which has helped my productivity is using separate devices on my desk for different tasks. For example, I have my work laptop, connected to various work-related tasks, while I also have a Chromebook plugged in to handle more hobby-focused tasks, and an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard to help with my scheduling/calendaring type tasks.

[donfrank]

Matt, I'm always impressed with your videos. Your studio always gives me this smooth relaxed feeling - and that background music is just perfect. I'm starting to work remotely as a university teacher, mostly using Zoom and homepages I have personally designed. I hope I can inspire my students as you always inspire me. Keep up the great work! 😊 👍🏻

[GoneToTheSnowDogs]

I loved this so much! I am just now working on an actual office, and it has been a beast to figure it out. Like you, it's a tiny room. 11 x 11! So figuring out how to set it up has been a task, but I am getting there. ! This gave me some good ideas for sure! Thanks for this!

[HanzHermannHoppe]

Great video, it continues to amaze me how (still) underrated your content is.

[philginakis]

Thanks for the video Matt, have been thinking a fair bit lately about how to optimise my office for multi use now that I WFH 100%. I have also been looking around at smart lights, automation and things that you always seem to cover, and it is a breath of fresh air to see crisp well produced content. Today was a great insight into how much effort goes on behind the scenes in your videos which I enjoy from time to time and its amazing how much work goes into something that always seems so simple. Keep up the great work, looking forward to the next one!

[Tuckerclan]

Goes to show you how the people that put this much thought into production, get the good subscribers that stay. Content is number 1, but quality is a very close number 2. Thanks for the tour. Stay safe and keep the great vids coming.

[saleemjessani]

All your videos are of the highest quality. Thanks

[joet]

Your videos are sooo easy to watch yet crammed full of information keep up the great work!

[suchdevelopments]

Matt, you got a fantastic workspace, you are disciplined, like it.

You have got to have demarcation like work and pleasure. Like a separate room. The separation is a tech way of NLP speak of getting separation of workspaces and leisure having separated spaces, having a door separating it by having threshold to cross, like a door you have to walk across. Small but a functional workspace, good on you.

[Jimmy-nlyi]

thank you for coming through on this one

[TwoBitDaVinci]

Wow amazing video Matt, I feel like I've been doing it all wrong all these years :) I love that keylight!

[flfl]

Interesting setup, great job.
I had to work from home and so I set up my office with a Dell XPS15 with an I-7 CPU (7950), with a 4K touch display that is the best display I have ever seen on a laptop. It's rocket ship fast and boots in about 10 seconds.

For a monitor, I bought an 43 inch LG for $400.00 on sale at Costco. I really can't express how great this monitor is. It doesn't have perfect color accuracy, but it is adjustable. Right now I have the color adjusted pretty damn good, but eventually I will buy a calibration tool. The en resolution is incredible, pin sharp. The entire screen is usable for work and it is amazing to watch movies and TV on.

I have a Corsair mechanical keyboard which is amazing for typing and I can customize the lighting any way I choose. It is beautiful, just stunning.

I plug everything into a Pluggable Thunderbolt dock which works really well. My computer sound systems is a 2.1 Corsair 3500 which has a subwoofer. It is amazing. Only a AV receiver with separates would improve it.

I enjoyed your video, thanks.

[ShaneCreates]

Great video Matt, thank you for sharing! Love seeing your use of HomeKit in there! 

I've been working through a lot of this recently, trying to make my YouTube setup more efficient while the wife and I also are adjusting to working from home full time. It's a process but it is getting there. Using HomeKit to automate as much as I can is definitely helpful. It's great to see how effective you have made your office/studio with such a small area. Great job man, keep it up. Again, thanks for sharing!

[CCGR-]

This was good Matt, I’m glad you have managed it so well. I will try some of your suggestions to see if it helps. Thank you.

[henrycruzcal]

Thanks for sharing your setup with us.
I agree with most of what u said and don't agree with how you dress for work. That is completely subjective.
It works for you and that's 'you'. What makes me feel comfortable is a nice tshirt and light pj pants. I keep a polo shirt at hand for my video conferences of which I have about 3 a week.
It's all about feeling comfortable and taking advantage of the situation.
I am lucky to have a 11x12 office just off of my master bed room. So I get up and do the 3 Ss and then stumble into my office. I'm surrounded by my 32" monitor, tablet, phone, laptop and desktop with kvm switch so I can switch between work and my personal machine.
For me, it's about being as comfortable as possible and feeling like it's different here than at work because it is.

[stevedrtina]

Thank you for all the insight! I´m just starting with Video production and you have cleared up many things that I have not thought about yet. :) Lights, Sound, always the same cam position damm I have much to learn. And the home office tips are so true. Better not open that Bier at 9 am, it not going to be a produktiv day