Make Working From Home Work for You — People First Content

If you’re like many professionals, you’ve transitioned from a traditional office to a home office in the last couple of years. We’ve already written about how working from home is ideal for creatives.

But if you’re not careful, a home office can have all the negatives of a conventional office. Especially if, like many of us, you don’t have a dedicated office space in your home.

In place of interrupting coworkers and a noisy office, you get pets, family members, roommates, laundry, dishes, and a host of other distractions.

In my quest for improved productivity, these are three hacks I’ve found to optimize my home office while not breaking the bank.

1. Fake an Office

What are the benefits of a dedicated room for an office? Mainly the fact that it’s a quiet, distraction-free area, set aside for doing your job.

But if you’re like me, the closest thing you have to that is a desk in an unoccupied corner in your bedroom. Obviously, without the dedicated space, you lose some of the benefits of working from home.

Bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms. These are all shared spaces with traffic and tasks.

So how do you create an “office”?

(These tips also apply to home offices, but they’re more necessary for people out in the open.)

Quiet

The first thing to do is invest in a good, comfortable pair of noise-canceling headphones. These are useful in an office environment, but especially at home. The more noise canceling, the better. Since then, they can do double duty as earplugs. Sometimes music can distract you, and white noise can make you sleepy.

The comfortable part is crucial because you will be wearing them for long periods. So foam earbud tips are handy!

Reduce visual noise

My desk has changed direction several times now. I finally think I’ve found my Goldilocks solution: I have my desk facing a wall.

The first time I had my desk facing the rest of my room, which was a huge mistake. If there’s one thing about homes, they tend to accumulate tasks. So one moment, you’re hard at work, the next you’ve noticed how many clothes are on the floor, and before you know it, you’re in the middle of a load of laundry.

And even if you don’t give in to temptation, you’ll be thinking about it.

Having to clean your entire space before you get any work done for most people isn’t feasible (or efficient). So turn your desk away from the mess. Maybe even invest in a room divider to keep your office separate.

Stop interruptions

This is probably the most difficult one since it’s not really up to you, and it’s tough for people with children or pets.

One thing that can help is clarifying when you need to work uninterrupted. For example, consider the classic “Do not disturb” sign on your door handle, barring emergencies.

Another tip is not to have the door in your line of sight. Even if the person entering the room doesn’t speak to you, you still look up every time the door opens.

And the last tip is to make intentional time to leave your office space to interact with your home. It will make people less prone to barging in with a question or concern if they know you’ll be out soon.

2. Practice Work Hygiene

I’m borrowing this from the concept of sleep hygiene. The basic idea is to have a dedicated space and a ritual, so you unconsciously know it’s time to do the task associated with those.

For sleep, this means going to bed at a specific time, not eating or watching TV in your bed, and maybe doing something like drinking tea or putting on white noise to signal to your brain it’s time to sleep.

And it means pretty much the same thing for work.

So as tempting as it is, don’t:

• Make your desk your workplace/dining table/vanity/craft table.
• Have things on your desk that aren’t work-related.
• Take TV breaks at your desk.

And do:

• Drink coffee or tea at the beginning of a workday.
• Put on music (I’m partial to Boiler Room DJ mixes, but classical or ambient music is great too).
• Start at roughly the same time every day.

3. Spruce Up Your Work Space

Bare walls, harsh lighting, ugly desk. Nothing will make you want to get to work less than an unwelcoming desk area.

I’m not going to tell you how to decorate your home office. There are minimalists and maximalists, and I wouldn’t dare offend one or the other. But I will ask you to do something to make your desk a place you feel comfortable, happy, and creative in.

This is one way you can take advantage of having a space just for you. You don’t have to be an interior decorator, but here are some concrete ways to make your area more productive.

Ideas for decorating a home office

1. Plants. There’s so much science to back up the benefits of filling your space with plants.

Your air quality strongly correlates to your productivity, and plants are living, breathing air cleaning machines.

Some studies show that just looking at plants increases your creativity.

Pothos plants are inexpensive and almost unkillable, even if you have a brown thumb. I have a few perched on top of my desk, and I’ll say from personal experience that they improve my mood every time I look at them.

2. Colors. You’ve probably heard that different colors affect us psychologically. So why not harness that power?

If your job is stressful, try blue to calm yourself and lower your heart rate. If you struggle with energy, decorate with yellow to energize yourself. If your job requires a lot of creativity, use orange to stimulate your imagination.

This can mean painting the wall you look at the most, putting nick-nacks that color on your desk, or even just changing your desktop background.

3. Cover your bare walls. Pictures, posters, tapestry, really anything that you find pleasant to look at. Being able to rest your eyes and daydream will do wonders for your mental health and productivity.

You can even use color psychology with whatever art you put up!

Conclusion

Even with everything working from home offers, it can have some downsides. We can’t all have fancy home office spaces. Still, luckily you can do some simple things to make your workplace a pleasant and welcoming area that lets you perform at the level you want to.

If you’re looking to take even more stress off your shoulders, People First Content can help! We provide custom, high-quality content for businesses who want to be able to focus on other things. Check out our blog packages today!

Originally published at https://www.peoplefirstcontent.com on March 20, 2022.