Desk hacks: Must-have gadgets

If a grey office cubicle leaves you feeling unmotivated, you're not alone.
Simply by customising your workspace to your own tastes, you can improve your job satisfaction and morale, studies show. In fact, allowing employees to personalise their work environment can positively impact a company's bottom line by increasing productivity and reducing staff turnover, noted a 2007 study Workplace Personalization and Organizational Culture.
A 2010 study from two occupational psychologists at the University of Exeter found that employees who were permitted to decorate their small office as they wished were more productive than those who had no control of their area's appearance.
Whether you have a corner office or an open desk in a cubicle farm, there are plenty of ways to incorporate your own personal style that go beyond adding a bobble head figurine or a few picture frames. If creativity, fitness or ergonomics is your thing, you can transform your work area from a basic space into a mini art, entertainment or fitness center — no standing desk treadmills required.
How would you decorate your class or your desk? 200 words

Gap year for grown-ups?

Soon after he turned 50, Mark Perriton realised he needed a change.
“I was pretty miserable,” said the former managing director of an office refurbisher. “I was turning up for work ... not feeling fully engaged ... going through the process of working and living. Eventually I looked in the mirror and said I want to change something.”
That change came in the form of several months off and a nearly round-the-world cycling trip taking in parts of North and South America and South East Asia.
“I have come back and now I am much more enthusiastic and focused than I was before,” Perriton said.
He now works as a consultant in the same industry, making as much money as he did before but working just eight months each year. He uses his free months to pursue his passions, skiing and cycling.
Perriton is just one of many senior executives who take time off work, often to rethink their careers or sometimes simply to recharge their batteries, eschewing the idea that if you’re gone from the game, you’ll quickly be forgotten.
Indeed, career break numbers are rising according to Susan Griffith, author of Gap Years for Grown Ups, partly because “50- and 60-somethings are feeling far more fit and adventurous than in previous generations”, she said.
She predicts that reports of recovering job markets “will inspire more to step off the treadmill” because people will have less fear of joblessness upon their return. Dan Clements, author of Escape 101: The Four Secrets to Taking a Sabbatical or Career Break Without Losing Your Money or Your Mind, agrees.
He said, anecdotally, economic growth is leading to a rise in so-called 'elective sabbaticals' where executives choose to take a step back from their careers – just like Perriton. What’s more, people who are more established in their careers and have risen the ranks in their industry are more likely to have the financial means to take a break, often funding them with savings and investments built up over the course of a successful career.

 What would you do in a gap year? Write about it in 200 words

Good Omens: How Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote a book

Cult novel Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, has been adapted for radio. Here Neil Gaiman tells the story of how it came to be written.
Terry took the first 5,000 words and typed them into his word processor, and by the time he had finished they were the first 10,000 words. Terry had borrowed all the things about me that he thought were amusing, like my tendency back then to wear sunglasses even when it wasn't sunny, and given them, along with a vintage Bentley, to Crawleigh, who had now become Crowley. The Satanic Nurses were Satanic Nuns.
The book was under way.
We wrote the first draft in about nine weeks. Nine weeks of gloriously long phone calls, in which we would read each other what we'd written, and try to make the other one laugh. We'd plot, delightedly, and then hurry off the phone, determined to get to the next good bit before the other one could. We'd rewrite each other, footnote each other's pages, sometimes even footnote each other's footnotes.
We would throw characters in, hand them off when we got stuck. We finished the book and decided we would only tell people a little about the writing process - we would tell them that Agnes Nutter was Terry's, and the Four Horsemen (and the Other Four Motorcyclists) were mine.

The second draft took about four months, as we took what we'd done and did our very best to make it look like we knew what had been doing all along. Pepper became a girl, and so did War. I went to stay with Terry at the end of the book, to patch it all together and make sure it worked, and slept in his spare room. The window was open, and there was a dovecote nearby. When he woke me that morning, the air of the bedroom was filled with fluttering white doves. I assumed this always happened in the Pratchett household, but he said it was only me.
All that remained was to find a title for the book we'd written. I suggested Good Omens, Terry liked The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. We compromised, or rather, we collaborated, and we had a title and a subtitle.

If you had to write a book, what would it be about? Write 200 words.

The world´s most famous christmas tree

Is there any special tradition in your family for Christmas? Write 200words about it.

The hidden motives behind workplace perks

Ryan Schaffer watched the sun rise over the mountains of northern Portugal from the terrace of a refurbished medieval monastery. He sipped his espresso, took his time getting ready, then headed down to join his workmates for their regular morning meeting.
Yes, his workmates.

They chatted for a while before heading to various corners of the 15th century building with their laptops. It’s all in a day’s work for employees of San Francisco-based Expensify, a start-up specialising in the less-than-glamorous world of expense report management.

Every year the six-year-old company offers its approximately 50 employees the opportunity to be flown to a different country to travel and work for a month. Destinations have included Thailand, Vietnam, Croatia, India and, this year, Portugal.

“We spent a week in Lisbon, Porto, [in a] monastery called Pousada de Amares, an hour from Braga and Lagos,” explained Schaffer, the 27-year-old director of marketing and strategy at Expensify. The trip took people around much of Portugal.
There was, he said, generally no fixed place to work, with 35 employees scattered across various Airbnb lodgings, some with their partners and families. The trip also included nightly informal meals with colleagues and a weekly company dinner.
“People are sceptical when we say we work hard during our offshore month, but truly we work more that month than we do when we're back in the States,” Schaffer said.

Where would you like to be taken to travel and work for a month by la Preu?Why? Answer with 200 words.