What’s in My Backpack 🎒 Software Engineer Edition

Hi everyone! If you're new  to the channel my name is Elsa and I'm a software engineer working at Amazon. Today, I'm going to show you what's in my work backpack.

In my previous "Day in the life" video a bunch of you guys asked me about what headphones  I use. So I figured I would just make a video showing you guys what I usually carry to work. To be honest, I've always loved watching other creators' "What's In My Bag" videos because I always  get some inspiration or end up discovering some weird tech gadget that I want for myself.

So I  figured that you guys can also find something interesting today. You will also find links to  all the stuff that I'm gonna mention in this video in the description box down below. So the  first item on the list has to be the backpack this is a Herschel City Backpack Mid-Volume.

This is a 14L backpack, has come with me everywhere since I joined Amazon and I simply  love it. Like, the design is just so clean and simple and it's lightweight. It just doesn't have  too much stuff.

I feel like in the tech industry, specially software Engineers we usually wear huge  backpacks I remember when I was back in uni I used to have like a big one and I honestly I feel like  I looked like a turtle wearing it like was so big had a bunch of hidden pockets. But when I started  working I really wanted something simple. There's one main area to throw everything and one zip  pocket, that's all.

It also perfectly fits my 16 inch MacBook Pro. Bear in mind that this backpack  doesn't come with a laptop sleeve. And I've got my laptop charger of course, and my headphones.

I would say that besides my laptop my noise canceling headphones are the most essential item  on my backpack these are the Sony WH-1000XM4 I couldn't remember that I'm sorry. So yeah these  headphones have become the most essential item on my backpack because I use them at the office all  the time. When you work in an open office like me there is always some people chatting around and  I just can't focus when there's too much noise and when I hear people talking.

So when I'm doing  some deep work I just put these on and I literally can't hear anything. And also I've been finding  them super useful to travel lately I've been taking a lot of long flights and it turned out to  be so useful even to sleep honestly like airplanes are so noisy you just put this on and you can  literally sleep. Oh yeah, and it comes with the case um this is like super easy to carry around and  then it comes with an adapter for the plane which is super useful to watch movies on the plane and  actually hear the movie.

Because the plane noise is so loud. In case you're running out of battery  it also comes with a cable, to be honest I never had an instance where it literally ran out of  battery. I think it lasts 30 hours with the noise cancellation on.

It lasts so much. It's honestly  like I can't stress enough how good these are. I believe Sony now has launched the Sony WH-1000XM5 which is  like the next model but I mean if you can get these cheaper then I would say that these are perfectly  amazing.

Now it's time to show you the reason why I get so much stuff done, and it's my journal. If I  don't plan my day in the morning I know for sure that nothing's gonna happen. So I've tried like a  bunch of methods to plan my days and lately I've been using this Zelo journal and honestly I've  been loving it.

Basically, it has a daily planner where you can write today's targets, some daily gratitude, daily checklist, your sleep time, if you exercised or not, you can keep track of your habits. And what I  love the most about this journal is that it has lots of prompts, so you don't need to get creative. You just need to follow the steps and you will get stuff done.

It also has a weekly check-in  section and it also has a monthly check-in. So it's really complete in my opinion, specially if you're  a beginner to planning or you want to get started into planning your day but you don't really have  the tools or know how to do it. I feel like this is the perfect journal for you, because with all the  prompts it will really help you out to get started.

So right now as I'm using a physical journal to  plan my days, I also carry around a pen. This is a Muji pen, the 0. 7.

It's just one of my favorite pens  I love the design it's just like so simple I feel like it slides really smoothly on the paper. So, yeah, here's the pen I use for whatever that's worth. And now onto my most recent addition to my  everyday carry, which is a tea infuser.

If you're a tea nerd like me, you will absolutely love this  one. For the record, I've never been a huge fan of coffee, so I have tea every day instead. And this  is a purchase that I made in my recent trip to Hong Kong.

It's a portable infuser bottle and the  way it works is that you open this thing and when you're at home you just take this capsule, put your leaves in there, close it. It has a magnet that sticks to the cap. Then, when you put hot water  in the bottle you just close it, then you can use this lever to release the capsule, like so.

And  then when you're done infusing your tea you just do it like this it will stick again with the  magnet and you can drink. I just think it's like a very nerdy thing it's absolutely unnecessary probably. But, yeah, I love it.

It's really amazing. Okay, onto the next item. If you've been following  me for a while you won't be surprised by this one.

This is my Kindle Paperwhite. It's one of my  favorite devices ever, I love to read in here. It has tons of features, you can highlight, write notes, whatever you like.

This is, I believe, the 2019 model. I don't always necessarily carry this Kindle with  me. If I know I'm not gonna read too much that day I would just use the Kindle app on my phone because  that sings with my Kindle anyways.

So if I need to quickly go through some notes or highlights I can  get them from there. Okay, now let's have a look at what's inside the smaller pocket in my backpack. So first and foremost, if I'm going to work I need to carry with me my work badge.

Another pretty  important item that I usually carry with me is my SSD. SSD stands for solid state drive*. This is the  Samsung portable SSD T5, it has one terabyte and if you're not familiar with SSDs these are like hard  disks on steroids.

They're just really fast and what I usually use them for is to store my video  footage and I will edit my footage straight from the SSD. You couldn't do that with a normal hard  disk, I mean you could but it would probably be a nightmare to do that. I don't recommend it.

So yeah, if you're planning to do anything like that or require high speed these are great. Then I just got  some sanitizer, paper tissues, and some lip balm. And that's basically it.

All empty. So yeah, I hope you  enjoyed this video, hopefully you found some useful item that you can add to your everyday carry. I  also quickly want to say thank you for all the love that you've shown to my previous video, it's  amazing to see that so many of you joined this community and I just want to say hi to all the new  people that joined and thank you to all the people that have been supporting me throughout this  journey.

I really appreciate you guys. Oh and I'm also planning on making a Q&A video so if you have  any questions related to work, myself of or general advice, just throw it in the comment section down  below and I will do my best to address them in the Q&A video. As always, thank you so much for watching  this video and I will see you guys in the next one.