My minimalist productivity setup

[Music] Welcome to where the magic happens. You've seen this place before, mostly in the background of these a-roll shots and in b-roll shots where I'm either wasting time or being productive—the only two types of b-roll shots on this entire channel. But anyways, today we're gonna go over this home office setup of mine in detail so that you guys can spend more time on the things that fulfill you and that will move your life forward, rather than slipping deeper and deeper into the endless abyss of algorithmically curated content like this video. Also, like this video.

Let's jump into it! The theme that I had in mind when I was designing this space was minimalism. It's because I'm very original and unlike any other productivity YouTuber. The goal of a productivity space should be to reduce the friction in the way of doing the important things that you have to do in a day. You want to make sure that everything on your desk facilitates a concentrated flow state, because getting into that flow state is more important than anything in the world. It's even more important than spending quality time with your son. I think that's what Gary V told me.

So how do I achieve that flow state? Well, let's get into some specifics. The thing that I look at all day long is my LG Ultrafine 4K monitor. The thing I really like about this monitor is that it has a USB-C port on the back, so I only have one cable to connect to my MacBook Pro that transfers audio, power, and display. It really helps play into this minimalist vibe. The reason why I went with this monitor specifically is because it's tack sharp, it wasn't too expensive, the blacks are nice and deep, and it is very color accurate. So I really enjoy editing videos on here, because I get an accurate representation of what the image actually looks like.

The monitor is connected to my daily driver, which is the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max chip. This is like the premium top-of-the-line Apple device right now. It absolutely shreds 4K video. It's crazy to me that this thin slice of metal is all I need to run a production company that uses cutting-edge 4K video, multiple layers of it, and this thing doesn't flinch. The only downside is the cost. This thing costs more than I pay my assistant Jared in a year, but that actually doesn't bother me.

Sitting right next to it is the new AMD Razer Blade 14, which I mostly use for gaming, but because this is a productivity channel, that was a joke. I use it for programming. This beautiful, sexy keyboard is the KIKRON K6. I learned about this keyboard by watching an Ali Abdaal video where he was going over a bunch of different mechanical keyboards. Basically, he was investigating which keyboard would help him type the fastest. This keyboard scored one of the lowest scores, and he said that the build quality wasn't impressive at all and it kind of felt like a toy. But I thought it looked cool, so I bought it immediately.

And the mouse I use is the Razer Deathadder 2. I came to the decision to buy this mouse because I was playing Rust with my brother last week, and I was trying to flick on kids with the bow and I was just missing all my shots because I'm bad at Rust. But naturally, I blamed the mouse. My mouse at the time was the Logitech MX Master 2S, but I'm starting to realize that there’s actually a ton of input lag, which makes it actually less accurate to use. Even if you're not gaming, there was a delay between when I moved my hand and when the mouse moved. So to solve this issue, I picked up the Razer Deathadder V2 and I noticed an immediate difference.

This thing has basically zero milliseconds of input lag. When I move my hand, the mouse moves in perfect sync with it. Even for video editing, I'm way less clumsy and I can click on things more accurately, which probably saves me a lot of time and mental energy. Subconsciously, it's probably not that big of a difference. I'm not going to pretend that changing your mouse out to like a slightly higher refresh rate or response time will change your productivity forever, but I'm a bit of a snob, and I do this for a living, so I can get away with spending money on things that I don't actually need.

Moving on! So I'm a big audio guy. A lot of you guys say your voice just sounds so crisp—why does it sound so crisp? Well, partly it's because of this mic I'm using. I'm probably not gonna give it a shout out, but a lot of that is because I'm a bit of an audiophile. I maintain that the best bang for buck speakers you can get for under $200, if you want just like a nice little easy thing to buy on Amazon, get these Edifiers. I can't remember what they're called, but the link will be in the description. I've used a bunch of different small budget-friendly studio monitors before, but I always come back to the Edifiers because I think they just punch well above their weight on Amazon.

These speakers are around $150 Canadian, which is probably like a buck fifty US, so pick them up. They're very cost-effective. But if you want premium sound quality, these Edifiers aren't it. You're gonna be spending, you know, a thousand dollars plus on a pair of studio monitors if you want something like truly audiophile status. But if I'm sound mixing, I'm not using my speakers anyways. I'm using my headphones, and that's where my Beyerdynamic DT990 Pros come in. These are also budget-friendly, but I've literally never heard a better sounding pair of headphones. These things make listening to music an absolute joy. They make mixing audio an absolute joy. Everything has a certain level of clarity and purity with these headphones, and I'm a huge fan.

The only issue that might be an issue depending on how you use them is that when you put them on, they are not isolating, so you can kind of hear everything around you. So if you work in a busy coffee shop or a noisy environment with a lot of ambient noises, then I wouldn't recommend these headphones. But for this very quiet office on the top floor in a random house in the middle of suburbia, it works great for me. I run both the speakers and the headphones through the Scarlet 2i2. This is by far the least interesting piece of tech in this whole video, so I'm just gonna move on. But I like it. I use it. It works.

To the right of my desk is my whiteboard, and there used to be a whole bunch of stuff on here—an attack plan, marketing strategy, product list, video ideas. We used to just fill the board with like the entire Better Ideas strategy, courses that we could launch, products we could make, blah blah blah. But what ended up happening was analysis paralysis when there were too many things on the board. We didn't really know what to do every single day. And by we, I mean Jared and I. Jared, who helps me with videos, and his desk is over there. We're not gonna cover his desk—I don't know how proud he is of his desk. But anyways, we basically erased pretty much everything on the whiteboard save for a few key things that we kind of need to remember on a day-to-day basis.

We replaced it with this little box that has the one thing. It is the most important thing we have to do each day. We spend half an hour evaluating what this one thing is, and we pretend that nothing else exists. We don't think about anything else until this one thing is done. The result is that our productivity has skyrocketed. Once we have done this one thing, not only do we do the most important thing with clarity and focus, but we're more inspired to tackle all the other stuff that we would have had on there. So it's a win-win.

And the last thing I want to mention is my gaming setup. And you might say, "Joey, this is a productivity video. Why do you keep on reverting this back to gaming?" Well, I have a problem with gaming, and I'm really trying to work on it. But I do think there’s something to learn here. I just can't stop playing video games. So basically, my Xbox is below my desk, out of sight and out of mind. The Xbox being below my desk provides a lack of visual cue, so I don't get interrupted in the middle of being productive and tempted to play Xbox and sweat Halo Infinite.

But I also keep my gaming monitor at the base of this shelf so that every time I want to game, I have to walk over to the monitor, pick it up, bring it to my desk, and hook it up. You might be saying, "Joey, why don't you just hook up your Xbox to the monitor that you seem to be so high about on your desk so that all three of your devices are nice and streamlined and minimal?" But the problem is, while the display is quite nice and it's sharp and it has deep blacks and it's nice to look at for color grading, it's only 60 fps, and I'm not a filthy casual.

I stole this plant from my sister, so it makes my office setup look more zen or something. But that's pretty much it, guys. I don't really know what else to talk about in here. Hopefully you guys have a little bit of an idea of how I choose to operate my productivity setup, and maybe you guys got a few ideas. I don't know, maybe you're just entertained. But that's pretty much it. You guys can stop asking for this type of video unless you really liked it and this video does really well and it gets tons of views or something, in which case I'll just do it again.

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So if you guys want to make 2022 a year of growth, then I highly recommend checking out Skillshare using my link in the description below. The first 1000 of you will get one month of Skillshare free, so go ahead and hit up that link, learn something new, explore your creativity, and as usual, have a great time.

If you like this video, make sure you actually hit the like button, because when you hit the like button, the algorithm goes, "Oh, this might have actually been an above-average video, and more people should know about this type of content." That really helps me out, and it potentially helps other people out, so it's just a win-win if you actually click that button. If you're lurking here, consider subscribing and checking out the second channel where there is more meme content, more enjoyable content. I don't know if it's more enjoyable, but it's definitely mimier and more chaotic. And also follow the brand new Instagram that we got. We're kind of lacking in the followers department, but I'm going to do a giveaway on there very soon. Last time we had a giveaway, we gave away a bunch of Kindles.

But yeah, your chances of winning are pretty high because there’s like no subscribers on there or no followers on there. So yeah, give it a follow. That's all for today. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video. Also, go outside! It's probably really nice where you are. Even if it's not nice where you are, go outside.