My Work From Anywhere Project – Phase 1

Just over three years ago, our family moved from Denver, Colorado to North Idaho. We ended up buying a home less than an hour from the Canada/US border. There is much of that story I will share in other posts, but today I want focus on my work. Specifically, my work station.

When I first moved here, I as consulting with companies throughout the US, and decided to use a coworking space as I wanted to have some separation between my home life and work life. Within a year I started working for a company based in Sandpoint, Idaho, who had a nice big office. I was pretty content with more work situation.

Then as you all know, in March of 2020, the COVID pandemic changed everything. Our office went work from home (WFH), and a few of use who didn’t have internet at home (will share that story in another post) were still allowed to work in the office.

Everything was going pretty well, until one morning this happened:

That’s right. I struck a deer going about 64 miles an hour. Many lessons learned there, which I am of course going to do another post about. But put me out of a car for several weeks, and FORCED me to work from home.

Surprise, surprise, the kids have largely left me alone, and I actually like working from home. This forced me to clean out my garage, and turn it into my work station. You can see that here:

So you can see that I have plenty of screen space and a nice 7-foot by 4-foot window looking out on to my yard. I do enjoy this space generally and have continued to optimize it, but when a connection of mine on LinkedIn posted about his work station, it got me thinking. If I can work from anywhere, where would I work?

I want to stop here and say that I live somewhere really beautiful (again, there will be some posts about this). I have incredible views right on my property. Here’s proof:

This is really just the tip of the iceberg to the beauty that is everywhere up here. So I asked myself this question. If I have to spend 40+ hours a week working in front of a screen, is this where I want to spend all of it?

This thought drove me to my pile of scrap and reclaimed wood. You should know this about me. I scavenge for building materials all the time, and recently had received a bunch from my neighbors who are renovating. Thank you Tim and Justine!

So I started to imaging what I could build and came up with this rough diagram so I would know what a comfortable workstation would be sized for me:

And then, last Saturday I went to work. Sawing, screwing, and imagining what it could be like. And I started to come up with this:

It’s not perfect, but for a “first iteration”, I am pretty happy with it. I finished it and started experimenting with where I could set it up. I ended up finding that the tree fort I had built for my kids, was pretty stable for these feet. Check it out:

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So there you have it. My first iteration of a work station that can be taken apart and set up anywhere. Well for the time being, it can only go as far as my extension cords and internet can stretch, but that’s all going to change in the coming months as I embark on . . .

The Great Work From Anywhere Expedition!