Is your home office just replicating the traditional workplace?

Many people have been investing in fitting out the home office, constructing garden 'pods' or trying to make at least one corner of the house look like a work space. But would that energy (and money) be better served on constructing a pond, buying an easel and canvas, setting up a pilates corner or riding a bike...

"whenever you hunt, take your tablets along with you"

This was a quote c. 2000 years ago by Pliny the Younger, an author and lawyer. Observing that 'the mind is stirred and quickened into activity by brisk bodily exercise' I.e. combining work with leisure/pleasure.

Perhaps, going forward, working from home shouldn't just replicate the office environment with a sleek professional desk setup and instead support a new unconventional way of working where it's entirely normal to sit in a park coding, write a business plan under a tree, email whilst fishing and make a conference call at the top of a hill (assuming you're not annoying everyone else around you and the wind isn't deafening the other callers!).

If so, then we all might become a little more creative and productive…

PLINY THE YOUNGER

BOOK ONE
LETTER 6

TO CORNELIUS TACITUS

Certainly you will laugh (and laugh you may) when I tell you that your old acquaintance is turned sportsman, and has taken three noble boars. "What?" you say, "Pliny?" Even he. However, I indulged at the same time my beloved inactivity, and whilst I sat at my nets, you would have found me, not with spear and dart, but pen and tablets by my side. I mused and wrote, being resolved if I returned with my hands empty, at least to come home with my pocket book full. Believe me, this manner of studying is not to be despised; you cannot conceive how greatly exercise contributes to enliven the imagination. Besides the sylvan solitude with which one is surrounded, and the very silence which is observed on these occasions, strongly incline the mind to meditation. For the future therefore let me advise you, whenever you hunt, to take along with you your tablets, as well as your basket and bottle: for be assured you will find Minerva as fond of roaming the hills as Diana. Farewell