CALL me old-fashioned, but I prefer my work desk at the office to be devoid of anything homely like flowers, family photos and whatnot.

I haven’t spent time at it for a while ever since work-from-home was enforced almost a year ago, and I’ve always kept my office desk and space preferably messy. It’s a security measure: the messier it is, the harder it is for a stranger to find valuables and maybe even deter them.

I’ve never decorated it with ornaments or photos of my family, wife, children, cat, framed tertiary degree etc. I’ve noticed a majority of colleagues who go out of their way to decorate their desks and office spaces with the aforementioned trinkets – some even trouble themselves with decorative mini water-features to make their working experience more homely or comforting.

Unless you’re a government servant (whom I assume gets individual rooms as you climb up further the seniority ladder and pecking order), most of us in the private sector will have to live with shared rooms or worse – open offices.

While privacy is pretty much a thing of the past in this internet, social media and data-mining age, one frontier a person can at least maintain some semblance of privacy is the office desk.

Your office desk is designed to make you accessible to your colleagues or bosses to keep the machinery of commerce (and paperwork) constantly oiled, hence, everyone has a free reign of looking at what you lay out on your desks or walls.

Aside from being an effective security measure, leaving your desk and office space cluttered is also a good practice for your memory: only you remember where you left your thumb drive/document/pen amongst the heaps of office stuff and remember you will if you want to ever find it on time for that deadline or appointment.

In fact, if you love surprises, clutter and mess can be your best friend since you will inadvertently find something you had forgotten or thought had lost one day amongst the heap.

To me, an office desk should be two things: safe and functional. When I’m working, I want to be focused on the task, uninterrupted, complete with what is needed, fulfil my contractual obligations and buzz off the soonest once I’m done.

I always assumed I was doing my company a favour by trying to spend less time in the office, consuming its resources (notably electricity) while pretending to be industrious behind my PC.

But I noticed there’s a changing trend that’s ideological. While Covid-19 has inadvertently changed the concept of offices and the nature of work, large corporations have been working hard (pun intended) to make the office space and architecture more hip, homely, and desirable, to borrow the catch phrase used by developers: “work, live, and play.”

To me, the convergence of these three spheres is a terrible thing – made worse by the way it was normalised through popular culture, marketing and overbearing corporate culture.

Property developers in cities arbitrarily use these catch phrases to sell their projects with outdated images of Caucasian models doing yoga, working, dating, in meetings (a truly Asian trend of advertising still) on their buntings and construction fences.

Contrary to most, I believe that you should live the furthest away you possibly can from where you work in order for you to really “live and play”. I actually enjoy my arduous daily commute – on top of getting to observe how people behave in their vehicles (I’m an armchair psychologist).

I’ve long developed a healthy habit of deep listening to music albums in full, which is already a dying art in the distracted age of music streaming. Technology has already intruded into our private lives and play with smartphones and the internet (receiving a free company smartphone is akin to a dog chain on the neck in my books – but many are, of course, excited at the prospect of receiving something with blinking lights for free) and the notion of “working hours” is purely cosmetic for contractual paperwork agreements.

Another thing to try to avoid is the option of receiving a work laptop: this was offered recently to staff at where I work but as attractive as having a new laptop for yourself is, it’s ultimately representative of the bringing-your-work-back-home ideology.

I feel we must try to curb that elusive “work/life balance”, which is, in itself, I feel is purely an ideological construct by the Man to keep that proverbial carrot dangling out to the modern worker. Your most important KPI is your sanity.

There are exceptions where the office can serve a purpose outside of menial workflows: as it’s already a standard feature now that every office pantry is supplied with a hot/cold water machine or water dispenser, a sink, refrigerator, and a steady supply of Malaysian staples like Milo, Lipton and Nescafe in jars or 3-in-1 permutations.

I recommend all workers to fully maximise these facilities at their discretion for purposes other than work (but be mindful of how much sugar you are consuming with these tasty beverages).

Make a nice hot cuppa, open an incognito browser, and fill your mind with thoughts since siestas are banned in offices.

If you want your mug to stay untouched by others, here’s Azmyl’s #1 tip: don’t wash it and leave it on your desk (not the pantry sink) overnight, for most people hate cleaning up for others.

You’re also marking your territory like most mammals do in the wild. Don’t bother getting personalised mugs with your name on it, this isn’t kindergarten. And don’t hog the refrigerator.

Even as working from home becomes a standard practice in these Coronavirus times, offices remain a necessary evil in our contemporary society (especially if you’re in the administration) but you can still be empowered in this air-conditioned belly of a beast.

Discard that illusory Protestant work ethic (especially if you’re in a large corporation) – don’t work smart, don’t work hard: make work “work” for you. Just don’t tell your colleagues. – January 22, 2021.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.