Ant Newman

I can’t live without my headphones, to shut out the world with ambient music (Endel or SomaFM Drone Zone, normally). And I spend a lot of time wearing them on Zoom calls too! My preferred pair at the moment is the Bang & Olufsen H95, which offer incredible sound quality and long long battery life.

My work is totally digital but I always keep a paper notebook. I doodle, I jot ideas, I even draft longhand if I’m stuck with typing. It’s how I stay connected to my brain. It’s also an excuse for me to use my collection of fountain pens — I used to be a pen blogger and I have some super high-end pens. It would be a shame if they sat unused!I am also a coffee fiend, and I can’t work without a steaming mug on my desk. I brew with a Chemex or V60 and I love my Studio Arhoj mugs.

I have two young children, so I don’t really have a choice! I take them to school and nursery in the mornings and pick them up in the afternoons, and if I’m not present for family dinners and bedtime there’s hell to pay. But for me, I love my team, I’m excited by my work and most days I have to drag myself away from my desk. I keep up with emails and Slack on my iPhone 13 Pro round the clock.

Office environments can be fun and it’s important to have facetime with your team, so even though Spectro Cloud is fully remote, we do make time to meet up every now and again. But for me being fully remote is fantastic. I get to avoid the cost and timesoak of the commute — I’ve spent two hours a day before in the car or on a train, and I don’t miss it. Instead I get to pop out for the school run, answer the door to couriers, and most importantly really set up my space for productivity.My team and stakeholders are everywhere from California to India, Greece to Sweden, so there’s no advantage to me sitting in an office in London every day anyway.