The other desk

The other day my friend Ricky Spears was tweeting about an article of the Productive Magazine #11 from Mike St. Pierre in witch talks about the need for a second desk, another desk.
For years, I spend most of my time being mobile, traveling or in the office, or in the so the Home-Office. The later desk was pretty much useless. On 2010 I began working more at home, especially fridays, and begin struggling with the home office concept. That struggle came to and end around mid 2011 when I began working on what my wife called at the time “The Other Desk”
Little by little I began spending more and more productive time on the other desk, until one day I simply make the move.
I work mostly at home these days, in that little desk next to the fireplace, where I almost have nothing other than the desk. At the time this post was written it had: Inbox, Index Cards, One Pen, a copy of each of my books, iPad Keyboard (on the Origami case), a lamp, a picture of our family and a charger/speakers for my iPhone. Nothing else.
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Let me explain. When I envision my first home-office around 2004. I want it something that could be better equipped and supplied that the office I was working then. It had the scanner, the printer, the supplies and everything at reach. I continue with that idea of the perfect supplied office for years, I even got one version that had two desks in the home-office, one for working standing up and one for working sitting down. I had the couch, the music and more; but hate working there, so most of the time I pick the laptop and work somewhere else.
When I make the move to work mostly on my home-office, I again set the perfect office, and everyday, pick the laptop(and later the iPad) and work on the dinning table. (Driving my wife crazy)
When I began moving to “the other desk” I did it in a simple fashion, I didn’t move anything that I wasn’t going to use, and I try on friday to return anything that I am not going to use or don’t use to the desk on the original home-office room, the result is a super simple and clean desk.
Since I work mostly on my iPad, the laptop is in a desk on the original Home-Office room, and only get to be on “the other desk” when an specific task is going to required that I use it.
That’s my standup desk, in the Home-Office where all the tools are, the printer, the scanner, the files, the reference material and more. That’s the ideal office space, sadly for me, not the ideal to accomplish work or to get work done.
What took me years to understand is that I need was a desk to work, and a place to have all those equipment, and supplies that mostly distract me from the task on hand, making me less efficient, making me want to use the room less and less. The clutter generated by all that equipment didn’t motivate me to work more, but less.
I need a super clean desk. If I need the scanner, I can spend the extra ten seconds that will take me to walk to the room where the printer is, same with those files I don’t need daily, same with the stack of folders, same with the pens, hard drives and even the laptop.
If I will not use it tomorrow, I don’t want the thing in my desk. For the first time, I have a desk that I love, and that I am actually working on. Does that mean I quit on the idea of working on a table on Starbucks or the coffee shop? No.
There are days that I continue packing and go to a Starbucks I had found near my home. After years of trying I found the perfect one, is inside of a Target Store and don’t have internet access, and that allow me to be really productive. That may be “the other-other desk”