Do you feel unproductive when you work at home?
You can’t focus doing work at home and always end up binge-watching Netflix?
I feel your frustration.
Rest assured, these design tips will help you be more productive with your work at home.
This is perfect for freelancers, a startup business without a dedicated physical office, and students. Or anyone who’s doing their work at home.
Are you any of these people?
Then, let’s start hacking your workspace at home into a productive space.
1. Separate work and rest by changing your bedroom layout
You’re sharing a home with your friends, and the only private space you have is your bedroom. It’s also where you do your work. But you realized that when you do your work in your bedroom, you’ll end up lying in bed and stare at your phone for hours instead of getting any work done. Okay, you don’t want to spend a single dime on making your home a more productive space to work? Here's the solution to make your room more productive when you’re working from home. Simply, change the layout of your bedroom. A typical bedroom would have a bed, a wardrobe, a shelving unit, a desk and a chair. So, here’s the secret recipe. Arrange your room in a way that when you sit on your desk, the bed is not within your sight. Simple, yet effective. The temptation to jump in bed, and lie down like a sloth is reduced by 40%. Here’s an example of my bedroom layout.
As you can see, if I were to do my work on my desk, a simple head turn to the left would lead to the sight of my persuasive comfortable bed. You would be persuaded by the double mattresses bed too, trust me. How do you solve this unwanted distraction? This is how I should have arranged my bedroom.
I moved my workspace to the window.
Why does this work?
Two reasons.
First, I don’t see my bed anymore when I’m doing my work, hence distraction is poofed. Unless I’m turning my head 360 degrees from my desk.
Second, I’m getting the view outside instead. I get some sun on my face, and a clear vision to hustle.
Anyway, I didn’t exactly do this to my room because I’m moving out soon. If I were to stay here for another year, I would’ve done it.
If you’re not moving out soon, consider re-arranging the layout of your bedroom to be more conducive for productive work.
2. Get some plants in your room
Do you know that just by having some plants in your workspace, you can increase your productivity by 15%? Yeah, a psychologist said that based on his research. His team found that people gained higher memory retention by just having plants within your sight in a workplace. You’re always yawning on your desk space? Hey, guess what. You’re yawning because you need more oxygen. So, having a plant that oxygenates your workspace is a no brainer. You must be intimidated by the idea of having a plant in your room because you have to keep them alive. That’s not a problem. Since having plants make you more productive, you’d be productive enough to water them frequently. It’s a productive cycle, you see. Make sense right? Go get some plants.
3. Express yourself with a pegboard
What’s a pegboard? It’s a board with some holes on it. You can hold your stuff in place by sticking some pegs through the holes on the board.
Why should you get a pegboard?
You can store and arrange your stationeries and work materials on a wall. Every room has a wall, why not make the wall functional, right?
They look pretty because you can personalise the arrangement of your pegboard.
You don’t have to buy another expensive shelf or drawer.
No more messy desk.
You can motivate yourself by sticking some motivational quotes on it like “Just do it!”
Satisfy your creative soul with your own mood board by sticking your favourite paintings or ideas for your projects.
DIY your pegboard and be creative.
There you have it, so many reasons to get a pegboard yet you don’t have one? Go get it.
4. Get yourself the right desk
You would agree with me, there’s not much productive work can be done if you don’t have a desk.
A desk is the most important element for a workspace because you do your work on it.
I mean your laptop and your notebook don’t just float in the air when you use them, right?
Okay, if you want to be more productive, you should have a desk that is designed to make you productive.
There are a lot of nice desks out there, how do you choose the right one for your productivity needs?
These are the criteria you need to have in mind when choosing your desk for productive work:
Is your desk big enough? Make sure the dimension of the desk is around 1500mm x 750mm.
Smaller than this, then you’ll find yourself feeling claustrophobic. Smaller desk works, but you can’t maximise your productivity.
Does your desk have any drawer?
Get yourself a desk with at least 2 or 3 drawers to keep your paper works and other work items that you don’t want your kids to play around with at home.
Do you have enough legroom under your desk?
Make sure your legroom is at least around this dimension:
Height: 500-650mm
Width: 500-600mm
Depth: 300-380mm
Tick all these basics and you’re good to go.
5. Make your work fun with a swivelling chair
Sometimes the reason you’re not productive is simply — you’re bored and tired. How do you make your work less boring? Have some fun with your furniture! But don’t overdo it, otherwise, you’ll be too distracted. You’re a fun person. Your chair should be fun too. What’s a fun chair? A swivelling chair, my friend.
You need some movement to get your productive flow going. Spin your head off while you’re taking a 5-minute break in between work sessions. When you’re swivelling around, your heart will beat faster because the spinning movement triggers an adrenaline rush in your system. You’ll get more oxygen shoved into your brain as your blood-flow increases. More oxygen, more mental energy for you to be productive. Warning: You may feel dizzy if you swivel too much. So, be moderate okay kids? If you don’t want to spend money on a brand new swivelling chair, don’t lose your hope yet. The key here is that you’re having some movement in between works. Take a walk during your break. Or, lie down on your stomach and do some push-ups.
Keep your blood flowing like Niagara Falls and you’ll be checking off your to-do list like a champ.
6. Fix your posture with a laptop stand
Here’s a quick question. Are you hunching your back as you’re sitting right now?
If yes, then you have to start fixing your posture. Not only bad posture is bad for your health, but it’s also bad for your productivity. If you want a healthy spine and an unwavering focus, sit upright like a soldier. Are you using your laptop as your primary workstation? You might think, it’s impossible for you to sit up straight because you would have to look down on your screen which will give you a pain in the neck. Hey, you already know the solution. Lift your laptop. But how? Well, there are two ways to do it. The free option to do it, and the best way to do it. The free option:
Get 2 or 3 books off your shelf. Stack them underneath your laptop. There you go, a free laptop stand. Yeah, it’s free but this is not the best solution for a laptop stand. Why? You use a laptop because it’s portable. You can carry them around anywhere. So are you going to carry all the books around with you? You’ll get a back-pain just by carrying those books around in your backpack, which is the main reason why you want to have a laptop stand in the first place! The best solution? Get a foldable laptop stand.
They elevate your screen to line up with your eyes. You can adjust the height too, it’s flexible. They don’t take a lot of space if you want to carry them around, just fold them. Trust me, it’s satisfying to fold these laptop stands, it’s like loading a gun. Not that I have a gun. You get what I’m saying.
Oh yeah, they’re super light. Your friends carrying books as their laptop stand would shout “Wait for me!” as you walk like Sonic.
7. Activate your productivity mode with colour
When you work at home, don’t you feel sleepy all the time? It’s the colour of your interior space that affects your productivity. You use your eyes 99.9% of the time when you do your work. Of course, the colour of your environment would affect your mental state. Given that you’re not visually impaired. Let’s get on the same page here, some colours improve your productivity and some don’t. Yes, keeping the colour in your workspace neutral would give you this minimalist aesthetic. But, it can degrade your ability to focus. It’s not stimulating your brain to jump like a child. Hear it from the colour experts themselves. They said that the colours that trigger productivity are yellow and olive green. So splash some yellow and green in your workspace for your unmotivated eyes.
Do you want to induce more creativity when doing your work? Grab some paint buckets of blue, violet and red, and start painting your walls and ceilings. You can use wallpapers with these colour accents if you’re not keen on painting your home.
Remember, don’t overdo it.
Otherwise, your home will look like a kindergarten. Unless that’s your kind of thing (this sounds so wrong).
8. Allocate a dedicated space for home office
Do you have an unused empty room in your house? Why not convert it into a dedicated home office? This is a good idea if you’re the kind of person who values privacy and silence to have a laser-sharp focus when doing work. The room you have is too small? Don’t worry. You can implement a lot of design ideas on small workspaces on your own. A lot of interior designers provide the design solution for small spaces. Less is more, and a lot of times it’s true.
9. Divide your vertical space
You might wonder “What do you mean by dividing my vertical space?” It’s simple actually. I just put it that way so I would sound like Alan Watts. If your studio apartment has a high enough ceiling, consider building a mezzanine structure. It’s like a duplex.
Why having a mezzanine is a good way for you to be productive at home? You get to divide space between work and rest without having to extend your ground floor area. When you have a mezzanine structure, essentially you’re building yourself another storey to your house. A partial one. It’s not entirely separate as the traditional multi-floor house. You'd still get to see the floor below. Yet, you’d get enough room to distinguish between a space for you to sleep and space for productive work.
When you design your space this way, you’re allocating a programmatic function to the spaces in your house. This is crucial, as you will develop the habit of associating a certain space either for work and rest.
Conclusion
Now, you’ve read this far, why not start making your workspace works for you? I’m sure you want to be more productive with your work at home. Use these tips to activate that productive beast inside of you. I know that doing all these will take time, energy, and money. Do it step by step. Start with moving your bed and desk in your bedroom first. Then, keep going. Slowly but surely. Trust me, it’s going to be the best investment you could ever make to change your environment that makes you work efficiently. The ROI goes through the roof. What are you waiting for? Stand up and organize your workspace. Have some productive fun.