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How to Design Your Home Office for Maximum Productivity

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John Tailor
How to Design Your Home Office for Maximum Productivity

Take a quick look at your desk. Do you see clutters of paper which tend to enlarge every day? Or do you maybe see stashes of unfinished snacks and other junk that has been piling up for months?

If you are unable to see the bottom of your desk due to all the stuff that it’s hidden under, this means your productivity levels might be in need of a boost. A 2011 research paper states that a well-organized office is key to productive work. Statistics say that 90% of people questioned believe that clutter has a negative effect on productivity.

Follow these five steps in order to make yourself more productive by simply organizing your home office.

Step 1: Clean up your desk

Your desk is the place where you’ll be spending most of your working hours. Decluttering your desk is the first step to maximum productivity because cleaning up the clutter means leaving more space for thought and concentration.

This first step might be the hardest for those who have bigger clutters to clean. In these cases, you should try removing everything at once, leaving the desk completely clean, and then organizing your desk from scratch. Just looking at a completely clean desk can be a strong enough motivation to continue cleaning.

Step 2: Find the perfect corner

Not every place in the house is a suitable working place. When planning your working area, make sure it’s noise proof and private enough. Headphones can help, but they are only covering one noise with another. If you are unable to find a quiet corner, then set a white noise sound on repeat and try to isolate the distracting sounds as much as possible.

Make sure to have a comfortable seating place that enables you to keep your screen at an eye level, and your arms bent at 90 degrees. Since you’ll be spending most of the time on your posterior, you might as well be comfortable.  

Step 3: Keep useful things at hand

It’s easy to lose a lot of time looking for scissors, tape, blank papers and other office material that is often needed. In order to prevent this, you should transform your desk into a lean, mean working machine. Stack your desk with ballpoint pens, pencils, highlighters and everything else you might need.

For Australians, there is an all-in-one solution. If you are searching for quality office material, you can find everything at Winc Australia, from sticky notes to archive boxes. Don’t forget to provide your home office with protective sheets and protected power boards, just in case. You never know what can happen with a coffee mug nearby.

Step 4: Let the sunshine in

Light is an essential element of productivity. If you find yourself often sleepy and tired in your office, that’s probably because it doesn’t have enough light. In an office that has windows, the best thing to do would be to place the desk right under the window, and choose a side that has most sunlight. Natural sunlight is an evenly balanced source of light that is linked to health benefits, which is why you would want more of it.

If daylight isn’t an option, then consider a daylight-replicating light source that provides you with energy efficient, full-spectrum lighting. The goal is to bring the most spectrum quality to your eyes, because this is what you need for maximum work efficiency. Choose a light that has variable levels of brightness so that you can set the right amount of light at any time.

Step 5: Eliminate distractions

Finally, once you’ve prepared your office, it’s important to think about external factors that can cause a deficiency in productivity. If you’ve chosen a quiet space, then you’ve already done half of the job. Noise is an easy distraction, so keeping it to a minimum is the best you can do during your working hours. A “Quiet, I’m working” or “Do not disturb” sign on the door is a good way to inform people about your work time status.

As for other distractions, it would be wise to remove all unnecessary gadgets and technology away from the table. Turn off all notifications that aren’t work-related. Constantly arriving messages are the main cause of distraction, and this does NOT improve your multitasking. Make a list of all the possible distractions that you can think of and keep it as a reminder on your desk. Make your office a place where you feel like work is done on its own with just a bit of good organization.

 

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