When I first started working remotely, I spent months tinkering with my set-up, trying to get things just right. The desk. The mounted monitor arms. The webcam. I couldn’t help it. As a professional whose career revolves around making people productive, I think about this stuff a lot.

I’m not alone either. For instance, after I bought a new mouse, I sent a photo of it to my friend and fellow workplace technology fanatic,

Brown, the same way a foodie feels compelled to snap and send a picture of a plate of food.

One thing I was curious about was turning your screen to portrait mode. I had seen developers do it because they scroll through so many lines of code, and since they seem to know what’s up about these things in general, I figured I’d try out for myself.

At first, I hated it

UX designers optimize for the standard landscape layout, so turning my monitor on its side had immediate obstacles. For one, you have to tell your computer to rotate your monitor. After that, you have to configure your screen snapping tool to do the same. By the way, if you don’t have one of these, I recommend Magnet, which can divide your screen into thirds and send windows to their spaces with a configurable hotkey.

Countless other annoyances pop-up when you make the conversion to vertical. Windows don’t always resize properly and cut-off content. Many applications use horizontal timelines, so your workspace is limited. It’s like I say to aspiring camera-phone videographers who forget to turn their device when filming — it’s a widescreen world.

Still I was determined to make it work, and I decided to start optimizing my space for the zoom room.

Setting up for virtual meetings

Despite my best efforts, I spend a good chunk of my days in meetings. When I do, I like that time to be productive and engaged with the discussion; I like being able to pull from and contribute to the topic at hand, and I hate missing the conversation because I’m searching for a tab or some document.

So right away I had to find a place for my two most frequently used applications: Slack and Asana. Aside from Chrome, these two workplace productivity tools have been my savior in the shift to remote work. I placed them on the vertical monitor. Next to that I have BlueJeans, which is our preferred video platform with some pretty nice features, I have to admit, like live transcription and collaborative meeting highlights.

When I’m in meeting mode, I keep Slack and Asana to the side so I can pull and push relevant information into my communication and task-management tools

I give Slack less screen space because it doesn’t need much real estate to function. It’s there for me to pull the latest ping or send one out from whatever is happening in the meeting.

Asana needs more room. Most projects in this platform are arranged in vertical lists, so it’s really nice to be able to reference or even do a screen share live.

This set up works well up to a point where you need a little more space to focus and bang out some deliverables. For that, I organize my apps a little differently.

Preparing my space for deep work

After much effort protecting my calendar, I do find now that I’m no longer sitting in back-to-back meetings all day and that I usually have at least one solid, undisturbed hour to do deep work, a term I’ve borrowed from Cal Newport’s book of the same title.

When I’m in deep work mode, most of my screen goes to Miro or Google Docs. I pull reference info from a versatile chrome browser with an eye on the calendar.

The first thing you’ll notice is that I’ve gotten rid of Slack. The notifications break my concentration and the unread threads tempt me down countless rabbit holes of faux work. Instead I pop a chrome browser there usually to pull reference material.

I like to keep a calendar in the laptop monitor for two reasons: 1) I tend to schedule a lot of meetings when I’m in the zone. 2) I tend to get so engrossed I forget when my next meeting is.

Set-up like a sous chef

This exercise reminded me of a principle I learned from kitchen designers while working with Chipotle from 2013–2018, a time when they were capitalizing on cooking spaces optimized for maximum output and efficiency. Think in terms of triangles.

In a restaurant, workers’ tasks are modeled as the moves between three spaces. For instance, a cook’s shift is hundreds of movements between the grill, the cutting board, and the service line. Back and forth repeatedly in every possible combination. Same for a cashier. They oscillate between the register, the drink cooler, and the chip shelves. Over and over. All day long. And so a truly thoughtful design considers the movements between these spaces and attempts to reduce steps and traffic jams.

The same idea can be applied to the work of dragging windows or even your eyes across your digital workspace. While physically less demanding than moving on your feet, unnecessary switching costs creates a cognitive fatigue. My experience is that an organized space keeps me more productive for longer stretches and provides a sense of control. See mise-en-place.

In meeting mode, I prioritize workspaces that can house the information I need and can share the information I have for the group

So maybe your analysis looks something like this:

“When I’m in meetings, I need to be taking down action items and sharing project plans. I also need the latest intel at my fingertips or the ability to send a quick news alert.”

Naturally, you’ll need a task management tool and a comms platform in this case, but maybe you’re a designer and you’re screen sharing a whiteboard most of the time so one of these tools swaps out.

One thing I will say is that I like to have work tools away from my webcam. If I’m multi-tasking, I want people to see it. When I’m the one presenting, I’m not offended if others are disengaged. That’s my cue to be more engaging. You’re not doing me any favors by pretending to pay attention. You’re also not fooling anyone.

Other quick tips for your virtual layout

I’ll wrap here with a few more tips, but before I do, I would love to hear some of yours. How do you design your digital workspace? How are you keeping your desktop clean, optimized and organized for your workflow? I’d love to know — not just what works for you, but also that I’m not the only one who is obsessed with this stuff!

• Learn the hot key short cuts in your favorite apps like adding a hyperlink in slack or creating a task in Asana
• Buy a better mouse to give you more control over how you manipulate your space — I like the Logitech MX Master 3
• Manage notifications that compete for your attention
• Consider a soundscape application like Endel to get you in the zone faster and keep you there