Mobile Office – Everyday Carry Edition

In this series, I’ll talk about the various Mobile Office set ups I use in my day to day life. I’ll talk about the items I have in my “office”, what I use them for and what situations I use each office set up.

I’ve mentioned before, particularly in our new product design posts, that my working life involves a lot of travel or moving about between offices. As a result of this, and because I hate not being prepared and organized and I hate carrying around additional weight and items that I don’t need, I’ve tried to hone in my mobile office set ups for each situation. 

In this edition, I talk about my Everyday Carry set up. This set up is specifically for the office, although with the exception of 2 items (which are optional for non-work situations) it also acts as my non work everyday carry set up.

This is what I would take with me everywhere. In situations where I don’t have these items migrated into a larger case, such as my This is Ground Mod (in other variants of the mobile office set up), I will use the leather case shown here. But typically, all of the items you see here will go with me everywhere.

Items:

1) Pen – To take notes with. In this set up, if I’m using a fountain pen, this will be a cheaper, or more durable pen, such as the Pilot Metropolitan or Faber Castell Ambition, something that can take drops without breaking and something cheap that if I damage it I won’t regret having used it in this situation

2) Notebook – To take notes on.

3) Driver’s License – I use this set up for a quick trip to the shop as well, so it keeps my ID handy in case of an emergency

4) Credit card – A few times, in early iterations of the set up, colleagues would ask to “go for a walk” which ended up being “going for a coffee”. I didn’t have cash on me or any sort of payment method which felt quite awkward, so I try and keep money on me at all times. (I know you can set this up on your phone now but its not on mine and I’m much worse with my phone than cash.)

5) Cash (see reason above)

6) Washi tape* - to organize notes, where applicable (see my organizing with washi post). It also helps stick notes on someone’s desk or keepsakes/mementos into your notebook

7) Post it Notes* - to leave notes on a colleagues desk or for other’s use if they need to jot down a note (I don’t like to tear pages out of my notebooks)

*These two items are optional when I use this set up for non-work purposes.

I used to keep this set up in my This is Ground leatherback, along with my phone but I found it a little impractical to keep my phone in a button up case – I would need to unbutton it to get to my phone each time I needed it. Sadly, the leather would stretch after a while, so things would fall out of the side compartments each time I opened it on the move.

The case pictured here is a Black Saffiano leather prototype on trial for Pebble Stationery Co.