During the day, I work nine to five creating and delivering new mortgage propositions for a UK bank.
Outside of that, I create the occasional YouTube video or Skillshare class when I’m not busy looking after my two young boys. They’re five and two, so quite a handful!
I’ve worked in various roles within the finance industry over the past ten years. I also completed a two-year leadership program when I was 22. It was life-changing.
It transformed me from a hard worker to a smart worker.
And as a result, I’ve not done too badly for myself career-wise.
When COVID hit the UK in March 2020 and forced us into a nationwide lockdown, my projects at work were put on hold.
I was no longer doing a three-and-a-half-hour daily commute to work.
Hardeep says he’s always been a creative person. “I love art & design, photography, and I’ve dabbled in video creation in the past but never anything serious”
With all the free time I gained, I decided to wake up my creative side and started a blog on the only thing I’m good at — being productive!
Despite the fear of filming myself, I also created a YouTube channel and a couple of Skillshare classes on productivity apps and tips.
A couple of my videos have done better than I could have expected.
But it’s challenging finding the time to balance work, home life, and personal projects at the same time, regardless of how productive I can be.
I’ve worked from home ever since the first lockdown. I absolutely love it.
Using r/battlestations as my inspiration, I quickly set about creating my own office space at home.
It was a bit tricky, though.
We don’t have much space in our three-bedroom house here in the UK. So we converted the boxroom of the house into a shared space for my wife and me.
On one side of the room, Hardeep has his own desk setup. On the other side is his wife’s desk. “Although it’s used more as a vanity desk than a work desk,” he says
I wanted a desk that would fill the room’s length and decided on the IKEA Barkaboda kitchen countertop. It’s wide, heavy-duty, and I like the walnut colour. It used to sit on two Micke drawers from IKEA.
They’re okay, despite being not very sturdy. They also have become less stable as time has gone on. So I recently invested in these Maidesite standing desk legs.
I’ve kept the Micke drawers for storage purposes, but the desk is much more stable now.
