Inside Jay's Workspace

In the last two months, I have been doing everything from my workspace at home. I have barely been outside or anywhere other than to buy a few things to, you know, make myself comfortable spending most of my time indoors. I couldn't easily do this before, though—often being on my PC and my phone for hours—but necessity and preferences motivated me to make things easier.

The idea of working remotely has been in my heart for years. I only affirmed to myself that that's what I would stick with if I could find my way, and my work experiences at different work places helped me realize it even more.

Being honest with myself, I would always encounter burnouts and moments of frustration commuting to work every day. I had a glimpse of what that's like in Lagos, and I didn't like it. Soon enough, thankfully, I began to find my footing working at home.

My mom didn't quite understand the whole concept of sitting all day in front of screens and somehow making money until I had to enlighten her. I made her understand that, not only is it possible, but that is really going to be the reality of my life in the long term.

You see, I had to communicate with my family what it's like for me every day these days. It was very important for me to do that with them so that they understood exactly how to support me and did not assume that I was always wasting time on my devices doing non-profitable things.

There are a few challenges I face doing things at home, but what's life without a few challenges every now and then? Trying to circumvent my way around issues usually unlocks more insights, knowledge, and enthusiasm in the long run.

This little device right here, the MTN mifi, has been a life-saving device for a long time now.

You see, for some reason, internet services don't work well when I am within my house. I sometimes think that it's because the walls are really thick, but there's nothing I can do about that. So I usually need to be by a window to get 'okay' signals. Surely, that's not sustainable, so I had to find something else that could hang by a window and give me a good signal, and that's where this device comes in.

I had to upgrade to a much more capable device, a router, but I still use both of them anyway. They are positioned at different places, with the router mostly serving other people in the house.

Electricity is another issue for me. Rather than whining about it all the time, I decided to find a solution for myself and built a solar power system—a small one that provides me with more than 10 hours of electricity to power my workspace gadgets.

While I have a few 'physical' things I do to enable me to work from home, there are a few tools I use to stay productive and manage my workflow. Apps like Todoist and Notion, for example.

And, of course, my PC is where everything goes down. I have had to upgrade some of its parts, but it does the job I need it for now. These days, I use it together with my monitor for a more expanded view.

And that's a wrap on the insides of my workspace...