By Carolyn Purnell. Used in partnership with Apartment Therapy Tech.

Some of my favorite spaces to drool over are offices. Filled with books, art, and colorful writing utensils, they always seem to be the most inspirational spaces. I’m not ashamed to admit that when I see photos of a particularly inviting desk, I’ll fantasize about spending long, productive hours at its helm. Yet despite my love of a good work space, I’m rarely found at my desk, instead opting for the sofa, bed, or breakfast bar.

My boyfriend and I both work from home, so when we moved into our condo earlier this month the first question was naturally, “Where should our work spaces go?” His job requires a lot of phone calls, filing, and storage, where my writing needs are much more mobile, so we decided right away that his desk should go in the spare bedroom, and he’s been happy there ever since. I, on the other hand, have moved from a small desk setup in the open kitchen/living room area, to the dining room, which doubles as the library, and even to the bedroom, where I had a desk/nightstand combo for a while. And yet even when I have a beautiful space to work in, filled with all those books and pens, I always gravitate back to a less conventional work space.

While it seems somewhat decadent and at times unhealthy to spend the whole day on the couch, I find that I’m rather productive there. The mounds of books that constantly shift on the moving cushions, the pens that get lost in the cushions of the couch, the strange angle at which I prop my computer on the sofa arm: none of these disturb my work, and in fact, I barely even notice them anymore. Lately it has me wondering why I’ve always thought that I’ve needed a desk.

For those of you who work from home, or even those who make use of the computer at home in leisure time, how often do you actually use a desk? And if you don’t, are you generally peripatetic, or do you find yourself gravitating to a particular spot?

Photos: Chris Perez and Tara Bellucci / Apartment Therapy

Either way, we’re feeling it. And apparently, so is the bandwidth of Internet connections at companies across the country. In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, just a few days ago at L.A.’s City Hall, chief technology officer Randi Levin issued an email asking employees to stop watching the games, as its high-traffic demands were ultimately “impacting city operations.”

Network speeds, however, may not be the only thing affected. As reported by SmartMoney.com, the time spent viewing the events by workers (and not spent actually working) could create an estimated loss of $650 million for U.S. companies — a seemingly high price to pay for the chance to see if your favorite team can strike gold. Some inspiration could come from the downtime, though: South Florida’s Sun Sentinel lists a few lessons that employees could learn from watching world-class Olympians in action.

So what about you? Are you watching the Olympics at the office? How is it affecting your workload? And is it pre-approved by management, or is it in secret? (We won’t tell. Besides, we’ll probably be off watching today’s cycling events starting at 11am EST…)

Featured in photo: Setu Chair options

Michael Coren over at Fast Company makes the case for a 21 hour work week. I certainly work far more hours than my part-time job demands. But for me there’s a real blur between work – creating this blog – and writing or reading about things that interest me. And for many of us isn’t that the perfect job: one that mirrors your personal interests? When I’m reading Dezeen online or flicking through the pages of Wallpaper or Elle Decor or reading the newspaper in the morning over breakfast – I’m learning and absorbing and everything I’ve taken in feeds my work. If I included all those hours how long would my work week be? How many hours do you work each work?

Above: Eric Karjaluoto‘s at his nearly empty desk.

Above and below: Ryan, one of the designers at SmashLab, has a bit more stuff on his desk but it’s still tidy.

IrfanView: Great for beginners and experienced users, IrfanView is a freeware graphic viewer that has many unique and interesting features. This application supports a plethora of file types including Adobe Photoshop filters. For the incredible price of free, it’s hard to find a better option for the last majority of your photo needs (pictured above).

VirtuaWin: The vast majority of us no longer work in one application at a time. All too often we find ourselves switching between a few browser windows, an email client, photo editing software, and maybe even word processing documents. If this is the case using VirtuaWin to create virtual desktops is a great solution. Similar to Spaces on Mac, VirtuaWin gives you up to 9 virtual desktops to help reduce clutter on your screen.

Fences: On your PC the desktop tends to get cluttered rather quickly. While some go out of there way to keep their desktops clear, for most this isn’t practical. Instead of trying to remove everything from the desktop, use Fences to keep everything organized. Fences helps you create logical groups of the different icons floating around your desktop.

Force Empty Trash: If you use your computer long enough, you will inevitably run into the problem where you can’t empty your trash because a file is supposedly in use. If you have seen this then you know the frustration that it brings. Fortunately there a nifty little program called Force Empty Trash that overrides your system to empty the trash. Just make sure you know what is in there and that you are not trying to delete important system files.

Alfred: An incredibly useful productivity tool, Alfred allows for you to navigate and search your Mac as well as web apps within seconds. Alfred also allows for quick keyboard shortcuts to increase the speed at which you can navigate your machine. A great replacement for Quicksilver and Spotlight, Alfred is one of the best productivity tools available for Mac.

Laundry: Desktop backgrounds help set your computer apart and give it a unique style. Unfortunately, no matter how awesome your background image, after a while it becomes old and boring. Instead of letting this happen, liven up your desktop by using Laundry to rotate your desktop background in predetermined intervals. Laundry is able to pull from RSS feeds or even from Flickr to keep your desktop images lively and exciting.

The minute our plane landed I hit the ground running to prepare for a work interview, a new coaching group that I was starting up, editing my upcoming book, and organizing a birthday bash in my backyard for my daughters – complete with 85 guests, a jumpy house and Dorothy and Toto direct from Oz.

I was actually just as excited about all the things I had going on in my work life as I was about my New York trip, which was great.  The bad part was that I stayed up way too late night after night working when I could have been sleeping.

Here’s what I started to notice in my life and body after a few days of staying up way too late.  It got harder and harder to wake up in the morning.  The sound of the girls fighting over who got to sit on the tall stool sounded like nails on a chalk board.  I wanted to eat a chocolate brownie for breakfast (and lunch and dinner) for the sugar rush.  The world around me seemed foggy.  My body craved a nap from the moment I got up in the morning.

When I do get enough sleep I wake up excited for the day and feel really alive.  I am strong and clear headed.  I don’t crave sugar or junk food.  I am more focused when I work.  I smile and laugh a lot and I enjoy time with my kids and my husband.  I’m energetic and just more fun to around.

Needless to say, I let my sleep patterns get way out of hand.  I quickly realized I had to make some changes.  I didn’t want to keep living a half-awake life. I committed to some solid, sleep-care even with a to-do list a mile long.  And, you know what.  I actually got it all done, had more focus and enjoyed my life more.

So, join me, this month, in exploring how your sleep choices and habits affect your life.

5 Steps to Sleep Your Way to A Better Work Life

1. Notice what it is like for you in your life and body when you get enough sleep.

2. What’s it like when you don’t get enough sleep?  What does it cost you?

3. Ask yourself what time you want to go to bed each night.  Try on some different times and notice the response in your body.  Commit to a bedtime and/or bedtime routine, for this month, that will support you in getting the sleep you want

4. Consider what is possible for you if you do get the sleep you want this month.  How will you be more productive?

5. Sleep!

Sweet Dreams!

Illustration by Jordan Awan

By Gregory Han.

[via SwissMiss]

One of our favorite software tools to up our daily productivity is Dizzy, a small program that runs in the background and allows us to allocate shortcuts to resize windows on command. You know, so we can do side-by-side comparisons of products, blog quicker, etc.

If we recall, Windows 7 now has that as a built-in feature, so cheers to Microsoft for implementing it!

Lifehacker editor Adam Dachis recommends splitting up monitor screens physically in order to encourage true separation of play and work. So if you’re ever tempted to chat, but need an hour of super dedicated crunch time, you can simply drag the window over to the other monitor and finish up your work without blinking boxes begging for your attention.

Got a productivity tip when having a number of windows open? Share it in the comments!

By Anthony.”