As background, I've spent the last three years both working from home and attending an online school program. I've kept my work and school laptops at a single desk because I have a multi-monitor set-up that can't really be moved around. The unfortunate result is I spend about 14 hours every day just sitting at a single desk with very little mental differentiation between working and studying. This feels like it lowers my productivity because I use a very different mindset for work and school, one requires more active learning than the other. And it's like the advice not to do anything but sleep in your bed so your mind associates it with sleep and you have an easier time actually getting to sleep. I'd like to associate my desk with the active learning of school, despite the 8 hours spent doing far less active work.
I'm wondering if anyone has taken any steps to try and separate their work and school (or work and personal) lives despite both being focused around a single space. Do you use wildly different screensavers/desktops, or switch out the picture on the desk to make it feel different? Or take any other steps to make the experience of using each laptop different. OR, on the other hand, has it just not affected your productivity to have a single melded "productive" space rather than trying to make a distinction between when you use it for work and when you use it for personal/school?
