Change of Scenery: Tinkering with my Setup

Do you know this feeling when you re-organize your room or house or move to a new place? It’s refreshing, isn’t it? You get a new energy, and it feels like you get more ideas in this updated environment. Yes, maybe it is hard to find things at first, because they’re not where they used to be. But it’s a small price to pay for the benefits of a change of scenery, which can be a great source of inspiration.

However, I haven’t done it often with my professional setup, both in terms of hardware and software. As an engineer I would always tell myself: “If it works for you - don’t touch it”. And probably I was right in many cases. It doesn’t mean that I was always stuck with some old software, but I questioned my choices not so often. But lately I had this itch to shake things up a bit and get out of my comfort zone and try some new things. And oh boy, I only started and already feel more energized and motivated when I wake up in the morning, make a filter coffee and open my computer. And it all comes from simple change of scenery. Note: I’ll be mentioning some tools and products in this article, however I am not connected to them in any form, it’s my honest personal point of view.

Let’s start with a desk setup. It may sound weird, but I barely used external monitors, most of the times I used a laptop only, occasionally using a monitor when I had to show something to my peer (my desk in 2015, my desk in 2016). Can you imagine? No wonder why I have not so great back posture and astigmatism. However it worked for me and I doubt that monitors would make me twice productive, at the end of the day I am a Lead Backend Engineer, so a lot of my day is about terminals, code editor, meetings, Slack, etc. But a proper desk could be healthier and more energizing. Now I have a very basic DELL P2719H external monitor, MX Master 3S mouse and the best investment so far - NuPhy Air75 keyboard. I already had an adjustable standing desk and Steelcase Series 1 ergonomic chair.

When it comes to operating systems, I was primarily working on macOS since I got my first Macbook in 2014. Prior to that I’ve been using Ubuntu during the university times and this feeling of Linux freedom haunts me til now. I use Linux a lot as part of my work, but not for personal things. And it’s the next change of scenery I wanna make this year. My interest is growing towards Framework 13 laptop and Omakub setup for Ubuntu. Not there yet, but will probably post an update once it’s ready. I am not saying that Apple is bad, it’s an amazing company with amazing products. But as an engineer I am bit tired of it, I want to work on those Linux muscles, as it helps me grow as a professional. And I am not afraid if something doesn’t work on day 1, the journey is what makes it fun.

Now let’s dive into a software a bit. I’ve been using VS Code for many years, and only recently switched to Zed, nothing changed much there, but I like snappy editors that are really fast to open and run search over the codebase. I have a very slim setup with litle amount of plugins and Github Copilot. I don’t use integrated terminal as for the last 2 years I’ve been using Warp and it’s really working well for me.

And then there are things like Brave browser, Obsidian for taking notes and a few other small apps. I hope they all work when I finally switch to Linux :)

Anyway, the point here is that all these changes gave me a truly refreshing change of scenery, another perspective on day-to-day tasks and activities. And maybe I go back on few items here and there, but you never know unless you try it.