 What is up guys, Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If you're new to the channel, hi my name is Nasser and I'm now a final year medical student studying at King's College London and in today's video I want to talk to you all about my desk setup. It's where I spend the vast majority of my time, especially in recent months and years. I'm going to break up this video into four parts, I'm going to talk about the core elements of the desk setup, I'm going to talk about what's actually sitting on the desk, what's underneath the desk and then everything around it as well. So the first thing we need to talk about is this absolutely huge massive standing desk. It's by a company called Fully and it is the biggest one that I could find. It is 180 by 80 centimeters. The absolute best thing about this desk is that it is a standing desk, which means I can set it to preset levels. This one is just high enough to fit my desk chair underneath it to make a bit more space in my room. And then this one over here is what I use when I'm standing and studying or working on my desk. So the ability to raise and lower my desk this quickly and this easily is absolutely incredible. If you've been following my channel for a while, you know, the previous desk that I had could also raise and lower, but it was done via a manual crankshaft here on the right hand side. Since I've switched to this automatic one, I raise and lower my desk multiple times a day, which is absolutely incredible for helping with my posture and with my lower back pain, seeing as I spend so much time sitting and working at this desk. All right, sit back down and continue on with the video. All right, so the main computer that I use at my desk is this M1 Mac Mini over here. But before that, for the last three years, it has been the 13 inch baseline touch bar MacBook Pro. This thing has been sitting closed in clamshell mode connected to a monitor for about three years and just editing 4k footage and exporting huge, huge video files with the fans blasting. I've pretty much fried this laptop and the battery life has become abysmal, which is part of the reason why I upgraded to the M1 Mac Mini at my desk. And then the monitor sitting in front of me, sort of the main piece of this desk is a 34 inch LG monitor that I have on this very lovely articulating stand, which pretty much lets me do anything that I want with the monitor. It's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. That monitor arm is also from Fully. And if you're looking for a monitor arm, I mean, I couldn't more highly recommend this one. I think it's absolutely incredible and it has some really neat cable management hiding spots at the back, which I'll show you guys later. But basically this huge screen real estate is irreplaceable. I can have so many things on the screen at the same time. It makes editing an absolute breeze because I can see the entire timeline sort of spread out across this long monitor. It's very sharp. Honestly, I love the colors. I love the image quality. It's absolutely fantastic. Now let's move on to talk about what's actually sitting on the desk. If you haven't already noticed, I've got pretty much every piece of space taken up by something. If you go around my desk to starting off on the very left hand side of my desk, I have this road video podcasting arm with the road mic pro attached to it on the end and this red XLR cable, which I think looks pretty cool. So this is the microphone that I use for doing all of my podcasts. If you're not already following my podcast channel, the karma cast and listening to my podcast, please feel free to do so. Links in the description down below. This microphone, I mean, is absolutely incredible. It makes me sound very, very nice, even though I don't have that great of a voice for podcasting. And I think the actual beauty is in this arm. This thing just moves to wherever you need it to be and then stays there. It's a little bit on the pricey side, but I would highly recommend it. And then sitting next to the podcasting arm, I have something pretty strange that I would imagine most of you have not seen before. They're basically single machined pieces of brass or copper or aluminum or steel. And what you do with these is that you take them and you spin on a piece of glass. Basically, I just find them so lovely to hold in the hand, so relaxing to play with. And when you spin them on this piece of glass, they spin for 10 to 15 minutes. I've actually got an affiliate link for their products. I'll leave that down in the description down below. Feel free to browse the website and pick one up if you'd like. I think they're really cool. All right, next to that, I've got a pair of Audio Technica headphones, which is one I use to listen into and monitor my podcasts when I'm recording with the road podcasting arm over here. And I'm using this road podcaster that's down below me in front of me as well. So this is just a pair of headphones that's connected directly to my podcasting system and helps me make sure that both my audio and my guest's audio and the music that I'm playing and everything like that is at the right level for the recording. I've got it sitting on this beautiful walnut stand that's made by a company called Grovemade. I've actually got quite a few of their products sitting on this desk. I'll get into those in a bit. This here is a white lamp that I got from IKEA ages, ages, ages ago. I think it was one of the first purchases that I made when I moved to the UK over four years ago now. I personally think it looks really nice. I can articulate it and move it to pretty much any aspect of the desk that I want. And I've also got a Phillips Hue bulb inside so I can change the colors and the lighting when I'm filming a video in the dark. I'll put an example of that right over here. Next to that, I've got these Kanto U4 speakers. These guys are huge and really pack a mean punch. They've been sitting in my Amazon like wish list or whatever it is for like the last year or so. And then I finally bit the bullet a couple of months ago and picked them up. I absolutely love the sound that comes out of them. Wanna get a mansion at your cozy theater to watch my movies. They don't have as much bass as I would like, but the subwoofer that comes along with them is incredibly expensive and I haven't been able to buy the bullet and pick that up just yet. Next to that, I've got this camera that you're looking at me through right now mounted on two separate camera arms and then two bold joint heads to get up to the position that it is in at the moment. Now, this is probably what I would consider to be the messiest part of my desk, but it's incredibly important for me to have this camera mounted there sitting ready to go whenever I need it so that my video making process can be as effortless and easy as possible. If the camera is already sitting there and literally all I have to do is turn it on, hit record and start filming one of these videos then it makes me infinitely more likely to film these videos. And so generally in life, I try to reduce friction in every single place that I possibly can. The reason all these things are around me within arm's reach, like this pen that could be sitting in my drawer, but it's instead sitting on my desk. So that as soon as I need to do something, I want to have it immediately available to me so that I can actually do that thing and not procrastinate it at all. So underneath the camera, I've got a series of cables to charge pretty much any device that I could possibly need to charge. I usually use it for things like my power bank and then any old electronic devices that use a mini USB cable and sometimes I charge my iPhone there if I need a quick charge and I'm really low on battery. Sitting in front of me underneath the monitor is the Rodecaster Pro by Rode. This thing is an absolute beast. It is basically an all-in-one control system for everything that I need to do with my podcast. It allows me to plug in four microphones at once, a Bluetooth connection, a connection to my computer, a connection to my phone, and I've already preloaded a whole bunch of sound effects in there that I can just tap on and immediately include into the recording of my podcast as I'm recording it, which is incredibly useful for me because that means in post, I have as little editing to do as possible because I've already done all the mixing, mastering, and editing within this one device sitting in front of me. Directly underneath the monitor, I've got this native union wireless charging pad that can charge three of my devices at the same time. So currently what it houses is my work phone, my AirPods, and then also my Apple Watch. The reason that I love this wireless charging pad so much is that it helps eliminate the clutter of wires on my desk. I've gone to extreme lengths to try and hide pretty much all the wires that are on my desk and we'll get into cable management a little bit later, but having this wireless charging pad means I now need three less cables at least for charging these devices. And since I'm one of those people who as soon as they stop using a device, immediately throws it on the charger, I'm never out of battery on anything here. Everything is always being plugged in, always being charged, ready to go as soon as I need it. So this is the LaMetric time clock that you guys have not stopped asking me questions about. In fact, you guys asked so many questions that I made an entire TikTok video about it. I'll leave that link somewhere in the description down below or here on screen. So basically you can have it tell you pretty much anything. I currently have it cycling through the time, the weather, how many YouTuber subscribers I have, how many Twitter followers I have, the price of Bitcoin. I can also use it to control the Philips Hue lights that are all over my room straight from this little alarm clock here. I also have a tracker to tell me how many COVID vaccine doses have been distributed around the world in the States, in the UK and in Canada. Then it also actually serves as a radio. I've also got it customized to show the little orange dog walking on the side which I think is pretty cool. Yeah, it basically looks very cool. It gives you some pretty useful information, but it's incredibly overpriced for what it is. To the right of that, we've got the M1 Mac Mini and all the stickers that you see on it I actually put on during an Instagram Live. So make sure you guys follow me on Instagram if you don't already. Now the major problem with the Mac Mini is that it has very few inputs and output ports. And if you look at the back, you can see that it's already completely full. And so what I've had to do is purchase this external anchor input output device thing that I connect to the Mac Mini. And that's sitting over here just out of frame. So you can kind of see it behind the speaker, but also kind of not see it. And I like it that way so that you know it's there, but you don't see all the clutter that comes behind it, which I'll show you in a second. So basically this thing is absolutely amazing. It has all the input output ports I could ever need. It's got two SD card slots on the front, an auxiliary port, two USB-C ports, a USB-3 port. And then on the back, three more USB ports, two more USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet port. I mean, it basically fulfills every need for ports I will ever need on a computer. At the back, the ports are pretty much full. And at the front, every time I do any kind of editing, they get completely filled up as well. Usually when I'm editing, I have one or two hard drives connected to the front, as well as this special SD card reader over here for the SD cards from the Sony A7S III. And so I usually have a bunch of things connected over here all connected to the front ports. So I make full use of this thing. When it's got a lot of things plugged into it, it gets pretty hot, but honestly, I couldn't care less. It's not like I'm touching it. It's just sitting there on the side of my desk, but that's sort of the one downside I would say about it. And then this over here is the classic IKEA plant, as Ali would say, the old tech YouTubers have sitting on their desk. The same one MKBHD has been using for absolutely so long. I feel like it's a rite of passage for YouTubers to have one of these plants sitting on their desk. But what I've done is taken it out of that super ugly IKEA plant pot that you have, and I've put it into this Grovemade walnut looking thing, which I think looks infinitely better. And I love having it on my desk. Recently, as you guys can see over there, I've gotten into having a lot of greenery in my room. I've got a green behind me over there, and I've actually got some behind the camera as well. Having greenery in my room has been absolutely life changing. It's incredible how much it steps up the aesthetic vibe and experience that you have when you step into a room. So yeah, a little bit of greenery goes a very long way. Next to that, I have this pen holder, also made by Grovemade. It has this incredibly heavy base. So it just sits down and holds the pen in place. And this pen here, this is the best pen I have ever used in my life. It's a little bit heavy duty, so it feels good in the hand, but more importantly, this thing writes so beautifully. It's just so silky smooth on a piece of paper and it feels like this luxury item, even though it's just a simple pen. So I absolutely love writing with it. And then finally, this is another walnut stand made by Grovemade. I used to have these metal ones for my laptop before, but I personally don't think they look nearly as good as this. I think this is more fitting for a, you know, elegant mature desk setup. And then lastly, the things that are sitting down right in front of me. I've got this desk map, which again, I think provides a little bit of organization on my desk. It gives a really nice view to have the black, white, black, white when you look around my desk. I really really like it. And I think it adds a lot of just elegance and sophistication to the desk setup. And then probably my favorite purchase in recent times is honestly this mechanical keyboard. I've wanted a mechanical keyboard for a long time, but I could never find one that I felt was perfect for what I wanted. And then when I saw this and I saw the custom keycaps, I was like, all right, this is the one I need to get. So this is the Anpro 2 wireless mechanical keyboard. I personally think it feels and sounds incredible to use. Let's do a little typing test. So when I bought this keyboard, it actually encouraged me to learn how to type with all 10 of my fingers. Prior to that, embarrassingly enough, I used to type with these three fingers. I think I was pretty fast, but obviously nowhere near as fast as I am right now, actually typing with all 10. It's also got LED lighting on it. I honestly don't use it that much. There's all kinds of RGB things you can do, colors flying around the place. Personally, I prefer for the LED lights to be off because it saves battery that way. And also I just think it looks a little bit neater and nicer on my desk. This over here is the Logitech MX Master 3 mouse. Now, if you've been following the YouTube channel for a while, you know that I have been an advocate of the Apple Magic trackpad for pretty much as long as I can remember. I never ever used a mouse. I use a trackpad for pretty much everything, all my editing, all my normal daily interactions with a computer, and how wrong I was. I can't believe I was so stubborn and I stuck with a trackpad for so long. The use of a mouse is incredibly superior. If you're like me and you were just using a trackpad for some reason, because you were used to it from using laptops back in the day, please try out a mouse. It is incredibly better. It's incredibly more efficient to move around the screen. And a mouse like this, where you can customize all these different buttons, has made things like using my Notion infinitely faster and also editing shortcuts, tips and tricks, things like that, it's been really, really helpful. I would highly recommend using a mouse. And all right, I think that's pretty much everything that's sitting on my desk. I guess the last thing is my personal phone, which is the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I'm gonna make an entire video on that so we won't talk about it here. Now let's move on to talking about what is around the desk. First and foremost, and I think most importantly, we've got the Carmamedic neon sign up and above my desk. I don't know why, just ever since I started the YouTube channel, I dreamed of this day where I would have a YouTube sign like all the other really cool YouTubers that I looked up to. I absolutely love when I set it on and it is in the background of my videos. I think it gives it such a great vibe and appearance. I think it's really cool. It holds a very, very special place in my heart. And then next to that, we've got this anatomy drawing that I made before I started my YouTube channel in my first year of medical school when I was sort of needing something, some form or some way to have a creative outlet. I think I spent about a week of every single day working on this drawing for like three to four hours, something stupid like that. I think it turned out very, very well. I'm very proud of it because I do not think I'm a good artist. Actually, let me rephrase that. I am not good at drawing in any way, shape or form. I also drew the heart with like a bunch of branches and trees growing out of them. And then of course on the right, the silver YouTube plaque. I mean, just absolutely incredible. When I started this YouTube channel, I never in a million years thought I would reach a hundred thousand subscribers let alone the number that we're at right now. It's absolutely crazy. And now I'm looking forward to hopefully getting the one million subscriber plaque in a couple of years time whenever that eventually happens. And I'm going to put it right above that one over there on the wall as well. On the left-hand side of my desk, I've got this plant over here which I don't take great care of. In fact, Noor is the plant keeper of the house. She comes in once a week and waters all my plants because I will forget otherwise. So you guys can thank Noor for all the greenery in my room. And then on the right-hand side of my desk, we've got a classic set of Ikea Alex drawers. Now the amazing thing about these drawers is that they have so much space. I mean, each one of the drawers magically holds an infinite amount of space that you just would not expect. The bad thing about that is that they get really full and really cluttered very, very easily. If you guys have good recommendations for sort of drawer organizers that you can link me to, please do in the comments down below. I really, really need some. But yeah, basically everything to do with filming, to do with my cameras, hard drives, equipment, whatever all goes into this drawer as well as miscellaneous items, things for medical school, et cetera. It's absolutely packed to the brim, super, super messy and I need to get that sorted. On top of the drawer I have this thing which I think is called like a catch-all or something like that. It's basically just somewhere where you put all your stuff when you walk in through the house. So usually I would put my keys here, my wallet. I used to put coins in here back when we were a cash society and now we're a cashless society. But yeah, I just keep a couple of things there that I use pretty often. So my wallet and my running earphones are there. And then at the very back on top of the Alex drawers, I've got my iPad. This thing I use still pretty often. I write on it quite a bit when I'm taking notes, when I'm trying to memorize things for upcoming exams, both practical and written exams. But I just have nowhere to keep it on my desk. I am officially out of space. And so that's why it sits on the Alex drawers as a peripheral item. And then the last thing around my desk is the Phillips Hue light bar that I have hidden behind the iPad. As I mentioned, I've already got one in this lamp over here and I've got a light strip somewhere over there out of frame that you can't really see. But when I film my videos at nighttime and I have this sort of RGB light theme in the background, I think that it provides a lot of vibe and ambiance to my desk. And when I'm recording my podcast, I've got a light strip back there behind the couch that in addition to everything on my desk as well, creates this really nice environment and vibe for the podcast. So let's move on to talking about what's underneath the desk. If you guys have been following this channel for any period of time now, you'll know that my cable management on the previous desk was just abysmal. It was an absolute mess. And so I promised myself that when I got this new desk and I set all this up, I was gonna have perfect cable management. And in my humble opinion, perfect cable management I do have. For the most part. So underneath the desk, I've got these two huge cable trays, which I've shoved the infinite amount of cables and power bricks that all of these electronics on the desk actually need. There's so many, I can't believe that I've actually found a place to put them all. And they sort of very messily keep everything neatly out of place and out of sight for the 99% of use cases when me or anyone else is looking at this desk. I've also got a lot of the big power bricks just stuck to the bottom of the desk using some very strong double-sided Velcro tape. And then at the back of the desk, I have this long string of cables again, beautifully hidden out of sight, out of the way. And I actually know where all the cables are. I can actually track them easily. I can move things around if I need to. So that's cable management. I'm actually really happy with how it's turned out. I'm very proud of myself. And I'm definitely gonna keep this up for desk setups moving forward. On the left and on the right, I've got two cheeky hooks, which are really, really strong. And so one of them carries my bag from medical school. Every day when I come home, I just hook my bag onto there and it stays and I can grab anything that I want from it very easily within reach down over here. And then my headphones are sitting on a piece of metal from the Rode podcast microphone arm. And those are again, very easily within reach. I can just lean down like this and grab them when I need them, turn them on, put them on and just get back to work. And then you have just got a small rubbish bin to throw away anything that I need underneath my desk. But importantly next to it is this sort of electricity cable box. It's a very simple plain plastic box where you can shove in a bunch of electric cables, wires, power bricks, whatever. And it helps sort of organize all of that neatly in one place. Since the vast majority of my cables are tied to my desk or hidden beneath or behind it, I don't really have that many things in there, but it still helps hide all of the cables and things that I just need to have sitting down on the floor. All right, and I think that is it. This has been an incredibly longer video than I had imagined that it would be. I'm honestly just so happy with this desk. I don't think there's anything else that I want to add onto it to make it any better. All right, so that's it. That's everything that I wanted to talk about for my desk setup. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I know it's been quite a long one, so please do leave a like on it and also subscribe to my channel to see more content from me in the future. And yeah, that's it. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Face, that was a lot. And because I know I'm gonna get a ton of questions about this, yes, I like putting stickers on my electronic devices and I get all of these from a website called redbubble.com.