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My Most Productive Desk Setup Ever

2023-09-19 · Tech review, setup or bag tour · Ali · recording, 16:38 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Tools, apps and tech (also: YouTube, writing online and creators, Productivity and time, Health, sleep and habits) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Sponsor segment present, His own products discussed, His own numbers

In his annual desk setup tour (2023), Ali walks through his main productivity desk and filming rig, built to reduce the friction of what he wants to do, and a second gaming desk with a walking treadmill that turns gaming into steps and gives him a change of state.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Introduction: the annual productivity desk setup walkthrough

  • ★★ Ali says the Charcoal standing desk he has used for about two years is not the world's best: most standing desks, including the Herman Miller and Fully Jarvis ones he has used, do exactly the same thing. — 00:00:17

00:00:29 — Desk, chair, Mac mini, Gather 2.0, monitors, dock, speakers, headphones, mouse, trackpad and keyboards

  • ★★ Having tried basically every chair in the Herman Miller collection, Ali says the Herman Miller Sail, in blue and white, is by far his favourite. — 00:01:04
  • ★★ Ali's desk computer in 2023 is the 2023 Apple M2 Pro Mac mini with 32 GB of RAM and, he thinks, a 4 TB drive. (hedged) — 00:01:04 · Mac mini
  • ★★ Ali's Ugmonk Gather 2.0 hides his Mac mini on a shelf and raises the monitor and accessories, a tidy way to organise a desk that saves him a monitor arm. — 00:01:35 · Mac mini
  • ★ Ali's main monitor is the Apple Studio Display, with an LG DualUp to the side, often in a vertical configuration. — 00:02:04
  • ★★★ Ali is now mostly a one-monitor person: he used to have a 49-inch ultrawide for windows everywhere, but realised most of his work needs focus on one thing rather than multitasking. — 00:02:04
  • ★★ Ali's monitors plug into a CalDigit TS3 Thunderbolt dock connected to the Mac mini, which adds an SD card reader for footage and more ports for speakers and microphones. — 00:02:33 · Mac mini
  • ★★ Ali chose his white Kanto YU2 speakers because they look nice and sound good, going by reviews: he is no audiophile and cannot tell speakers apart. — 00:03:02
  • ★★ For Zoom calls that need privacy, or to concentrate when people are in the office, Ali puts on noise-cancelling headphones and plays the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, which helps him focus. — 00:03:02 · Zoom
  • ★★ Ali has used the Logitech MX Master series for years, now the MX Master 3S for Mac, and swears by it as far more ergonomic than the Apple Magic Mouse. — 00:03:32
  • ★★ Ali keeps the Apple Magic Trackpad under his left hand and the mouse under his right, using the trackpad for smoother scrolling and gestures to switch, maximise and minimise windows. — 00:04:01
  • ★★★ The keyboard on Ali's desk is a sample custom keyboard from Lightmode, his company, which is trying to build the best accessories for productivity and gets samples from various factories. — 00:04:01
  • ★★ Ali's Lightmode team buys keyboards and takes them apart to combine what they like into the ultimate mechanical keyboard; they are not there yet. He thinks some keys on his sample come from a NuPhy keyboard, which he also likes. — 00:04:30
  • ★★ Ali alternates between a mechanical keyboard and the Apple Magic Keyboard: typing on a mechanical one feels a bit nicer, though he types marginally faster on the Magic Keyboard. — 00:04:30
  • ★★★ Against procrastination, Ali turns over a blue hourglass on his desk and tells himself he will work on the task for only five minutes; usually he forgets the hourglass and gets into flow. — 00:04:59
  • ★★ Ali says procrastination is fundamentally a problem of getting started: once you have started, by a timer, an hourglass or anything else, it becomes far easier to keep going. — 00:04:59

00:05:18 — The blue hourglass as an anti-procrastination mechanism

  • ★★ Ali's Elgato Wave 3 microphone sits on a low-profile Elgato arm with a long USB cable to the Mac, so on Zoom calls and Part-Time YouTuber Academy live sessions he gets proper microphone quality while speaking to camera. — 00:05:46 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom

00:05:54 — Microphone arm, Elgato Wave 3 and the Sony FX3 with a 24 mm lens

  • ★★ Ali films on a Sony FX3 at a fixed height with a cheap third-party 24 mm f/1.8 lens: at arm's distance 24 mm feels like talking to you at his desk, while a longer focal length looks like presenting. — 00:06:15

00:06:55 — Sponsor read

  • ★★ A Sennheiser MKH416 above Ali, out of shot, feeds the Sony FX3 by XLR, so he just hits record; he used to record audio separately into a Zoom H6 and sync it in post. — 00:08:12 · Zoom

00:08:33 — Overhead microphone, light, Shorts camera, overhead camera, dummy batteries and the ATEM Mini Pro

  • ★★★ Ali's tip: work out what you actually want to do in your productivity or other areas of life, then find the tech, tools and systems that reduce the friction of doing it; that is why his desk setup looks like overkill. — 00:08:41 · friction
  • ★ Ali's Aputure 120D with the Light Dome II, on a C-stand, has served him for many years and never broken. — 00:09:10
  • ★★ A second camera, mounted vertically with a 50 mm lens on a friction arm, is always set up for YouTube Shorts, so Ali just moves the microphone cable and films a batch of Shorts in one session. — 00:09:39 · friction
  • ★★ Ali's permanently mounted overhead camera, for drawing diagrams and showing books or tech, is an eyesore, but he optimises his studio for functionality and low friction rather than aesthetics. — 00:10:16 · friction
  • ★ All three of Ali's cameras run on dummy batteries connected to AC power adapters, so he never has to switch batteries. — 00:10:45
  • ★★ Through an ATEM Mini Pro, any of Ali's three cameras works as a Mac webcam; he uses it for Part-Time YouTuber Academy live sessions, talking for two hours to several hundred students on Zoom and switching to the overhead camera to draw. — 00:10:45 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy, Zoom
  • ★★ Ali has had an IKEA Fejka potted plant on his desk since 2014, his third year of medical school. — 00:11:43

00:11:54 — Plants and the Feel-Good Productivity mock-up

  • ★★ Ali keeps fake and real plants around his desk because he has read studies showing that greenery, even fake, reduces stress and increases creativity and focus. — 00:12:12
  • ★★★ Part of what makes this Ali's most productive desk setup ever is a second desk: a Herman Miller standing desk with his Alienware gaming PC. — 00:12:12

00:12:38 — Desk number two: Herman Miller standing desk, Alienware gaming PC, Dough monitor and PS5

  • ★★ An Alienware gaming PC was Ali's dream since he was about 12; when his channel and business did well he treated himself, telling himself it is also good for editing in Premiere Pro. — 00:12:42
  • ★★ Ali's gaming PC drives a Dough Spectrum One, a 4K 144 Hz monitor with a built-in KVM switch, so a laptop, the gaming PC and his PS5 share one monitor at the press of a button. — 00:13:11
  • ★★ Ali rarely plays his PS5; on the gaming PC he plays Diablo IV these days, played a lot of Hogwarts Legacy, and played World of Warcraft: Dragonflight when it came out. — 00:13:40 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★★ Ali says the walking treadmill under his gaming standing desk has been one of the purchases that most transformed his health, and somewhat his productivity, over the last six months. — 00:13:40

00:13:55 — The walking treadmill under the gaming desk

  • ★★ In six months on his walking pad Ali has logged 141 sessions, 3,767 minutes and 244 km, walking while gaming or doing writing and other focused work. — 00:14:04
  • ★★ With a desk job of writing, filming and learning, Ali found it hard to get his daily steps in, and says there is a lot of evidence that more daily steps is better for health, longevity and reducing fat. — 00:14:04
  • ★★ After filming, Ali takes 90 minutes of Zoom calls, with Angus and with Dan, his online personal trainer and health coach, on the treadmill: 1 hour 26 minutes and 8,267 steps, aiming for 10,000. — 00:14:34 · Angus, Zoom
  • ★★★ Ali says everyone should get a treadmill: being on one is great for getting in the steps. — 00:14:59
  • ★★★ Gaming feels to Ali like a bit of a waste of time he feels guilty about, so he walks on the treadmill while gaming, which turns it into a more productive and healthier activity. — 00:14:59
  • ★★ Ali does not say everything in life has to be productive: health and longevity matter to him, so getting his 10,000 steps while enjoying a video game gives him the best of both worlds. — 00:14:59
  • ★★★ A second desk also gives Ali a change of scenery: moving from one desk to another, from sitting to standing and from Mac to Windows is a surprisingly helpful change in state. — 00:15:43
  • ★★ Ali wants two desks for two different modes in all his future homes, provided the room is big enough. — 00:15:43

00:15:50 — Two desks for two modes; sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: friction · WalkingPad C2

Also: People: Angus · Dan Go

Projects: Ali's tech, keyboards and bags product brand · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Diablo IV · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Harry Potter (book series) · Hogwarts Legacy · The Lord of the Rings · World of Warcraft: Dragonflight

Organizations: Fully · Herman Miller · NuPhy · Ugmonk

Concepts: five-minute rule

Places: Cambridge

Products: Adobe Premiere Pro · Alienware Aurora R10 · Apple Magic Keyboard · Apple Magic Trackpad · Aputure 120D Mark II · Aputure Light Dome II · ATEM Mini Pro · CalDigit Thunderbolt Dock · Charcoal Standing Desk · Dough Spectrum One · Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP · Elgato Wave:3 · Gatherer · Herman Miller Sail · IKEA Fejka · Jarvis · Kanto YU2 · LG DualUp · Logitech MX Master · Mac mini · Magic Mouse · Microsoft Windows · PlayStation 5 · Sennheiser MKH416 · Sony FX3 · Studio Display · World of Warcraft · YouTube Shorts · Zoom · Zoom H6

Only in the description or credits: Sony A7C · Sony WH-1000XM4

Also centred on WalkingPad C2: 8 Simple Hacks to Improve Your Health

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