Outdoor working spaces

...when birds, squirrels, and trees are your co-workers 🌲🌲💻 🌲🌲Need a break from the city? Wanna try an alternative working space? Fresh air and unique birds concerts are waiting for you.You would be amazed by the energy you can get by working on the outdoors even for one hour. This summer I started putting in practice an idea I have had for a while and decided to start trying out how it feels to work from the outdoors. The beautiful summer weather in Berlin was a big help to do so. I want to share with you what I learned from this experience. There are some aspects you might have to check by yourself and some others which are general to the experience of having an Out-Office. The main things to watch out for in my opinion are:💚 Your needs
🌳 The environment
💻 Technical aspects💚 Your needsSome questions that I had at the beginning were related to aspects like ergonomy and comfort. How long can I really be outdoors? Is it going to be good for my back? What about the sun and the screen?. I came to discover, that for me the perfect stretch of time to work outdoors is around 2 hours. I tried out to sit on the grass at first or work with the laptop on my lap, but watch out for this since after a while it can bring you some neck pain. I started then, dreaming about a table in the forest, I thought it was something not so easy to find, but as usual, where you put your attention your mind goes, I started finding a lot of very comfortable tables in the middle of nowhere and this is what I mainly want to share with you in this collection.
If you go for a place without a table, and you have your bike with you, depending on which type of bike you can also use it as a holder for the laptop and have an external keyboard with a mouse and use it in your lap. Read more below in the technical advice section about this setup.Another question you may need to ask yourself is "where?". Where do I want to go to work outdoors? Is it close to the city? Is it the park nearby? Is it a forest? Is it a very remote area? That will define a lot that you have to prepare.
In my case, I wanted to integrate my outdoors working sessions in my daily routine, I wanted to find a way to have a few hours outdoors because I felt a huge difference in my energy and my wellbeing by doing so. I knew that if I'd go somewhere too far, I'd probably do it once. But I wanted to find a way to be able to do it once or twice per week. This is also important, if you want to try to find an outdoor spot for working, you have to see how feasible and real is it for you. I encourage you to try different places and see how it works.
I found the best for me is, for example, stopping in the park, in my way to the co-working, working one hour from there early morning, seeing the people jogging, the children coming to the playground, dogs playing around. Or for example stopping at Wannsee in my way home, commuting from Potsdam to Berlin, and do some end of the day work from there. Or taking my computer with me in the lunch break and reach Grunewald with the train and do some post-lunch work from there. Even going to the garden of my building and doing some work from there makes a difference. Since you will be out you may also have to think about things like where to get some food, a coffee, use a toilette. In the highlights, I share usually you will find all of these in a few hundred meters. It's important that you can cover your basic needs when not in a regular setup. About the lighting, make sure you have some shadow, take with you your sunglasses, and play around with the screen brightness. Watch out for this aspect in order not to have a headache later.The type of work you have to do also will define some points. Do you have to do a lot of meetings? How do you feel about birds singing around and maybe other people passing by? Do you have your headsets with you? How much your battery last? I give some tips to save battery in the technical section.
For me, a good moment to go to my Out-Office is when I don't have to do many meetings, or the meetings involve just one or two colleagues and are spontaneous, not necessary meetings. If I have to do some quick call to check something, or some code review, pair programming session, it's totally fine for me to be outdoor on my data plan. But if I have to be in meetings which I know in advance will last an hour or so, I try to be on wifi, just to be on the safe side.🌳 The environment The place you choose is important, you have also to feel safe since you will be out there with your valuables. For me being a woman, the idea of being alone working in the middle of the forest with my expensive equipment freaked me out a bit. If this is a concern for you too, check out the highlights I suggest, most of them are crossed by many people, or are located in very quiet neighbourhoods, or are not far from a train station or a walking path. 💻 Technical aspectsWhen considering the technicalities of outdoor work you have to include at least the following:➝ Battery autonomy
➝ Work station setup
➝ Internet connection➝ Battery autonomy
Is good that you check in advance how long is your battery lasting without being plugged. Just unplug it for a while and you will get an idea how long, without doing any other trick it will last. Then you will know if you have an autonomy of one hour or three, and depending on how long you want to stay outdoors this will tell if you need to apply some battery-saving tricks. Or just go outdoors and be ready to come back when you run out of battery, that always an option.
In my case, my battery lasts three hours more or less, without having to do anything, so I didn't need more. But beforehand I was reading some tricks, like disabling Bluetooth, disconnecting the network whenever you don't need it, closing apps when not in use. If you have a Mac you can read more tricks here businessinsider.com/how-to-save-battery-on-mac?r=DE&IR=T
Also, it's important to save your phone battery. On an iPhone, you can turn on the Low Power Mode, for example. If you want to stay longer, you might consider having some battery pack with you, for your phone and for your computer.
In my case, I followed this article techradar.com/news/best-portable-laptop-battery-chargers-and-power-banks and I was considering buying RAVPower 26800 mAh Power Bank USB C with Type C Cable amazon.de/dp/B072N2KCBY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_EIHtFbXDDJCN9Even dreaming about someday going very remote for a while, I was thinking solar power might be a nice option, and I found there are already some companies out there offering such a charger for Macs too. voltaicsystems.com/solar-macbook-charger➝ Work station setup
The initial idea was to just put the laptop on my lap, but quickly after the first day out I realized was not a good one. So I suggest that you have a laptop holder, I'm using Nexstand and it's perfect, light and portable. But even some trunks or books can make the job.
You should have an external keyboard and a mouse, that will help a lot with your posture. Even though you're outside you want most probably to keep a happy neck and back.➝ Internet connection
Depending on the area you live, a SIM card with 3G would do the job pretty well. A great way to research providers if you're traveling is prepaid-data-sim-card.fandom.com/wiki/Prepaid_SIM_with_data
But despite any coverage data map you can find on the internet, the best is just to try it out, go there and see how your data plan and carrier work. All the highlights I include here work well with a Vodafone SIM card.