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Working at home can tend to be isolating and I’m not enjoying the lack of more regular contact with real people. I’m a great starter of things — books, blog collages and posts, new sites, cleaning my office, diets, workout routines, work schedules, to do lists — but I have trouble seeing things through.
And even though I only gave myself those two intentions, I’m always thinking about how I can push myself forward in my work and be more productive. So, here’s a series with some ideas that may help us all.
1. Change your environment.
My couch currently looks like a clothes hamper. If I worked in a proper office outside the home I wouldn’t have clothes strewn all over my sofa, would I? I spent some time over the weekend reducing the cluttering in my den. (Gosh, I sure buy a lot of magazines.) Respecting my work space and keeping it clean improves my mood — it’s some place I want to be instead of have to be. Every weekend I try and clean up my desk and get rid of all the stuff that piles up during the week. I’ve always been a big Monday guy, you know, a fresh new week and a clean slate, so a tidy desk helps me start off the week on a right note.
Changing the things on your walls or moving the furniture around can make things feel new and fresh and that’s often motivating. Buy yourself a new desk, a new chair, a piece of art for the walls, or a new mat for the floor. Get yourself a magnetic white board and hang it over your desk and use it to post pictures of hot guys you like (or whatever else you want) and you can change them every couple of weeks to keep things fresh.
Adding soft music or white noise can also be a nice change. I got a Siamese fighting fish for Christmas and I bought a small aquarium for him. The hum of the air pump is soothing and helps cover up a bit of the street noise down below, plus watching him floating around is a nice distraction and break from work.
Changing your work space can give you a new perspective by making you feel better and get you thinking in different ways, and that can translate into being more productive in your work.
Buy yourself a magazine and keep it on your desk. Flip through it when you feel you need a break, it’ll give you new things to look at and think about.
Tell us about your work space, is it some place you really enjoy being? Share some things you’ve done to make it a comfortable and enjoyable place to be.
These are all great ideas.
Unfortunately I get quite lazy with my work environment. I have a pretty small space to use and it’s always cluttered. I tend to write a lot of notes about things I need to do, ideas for content, posts I need to get around to doing, then they just all pile up on my desk until I eventually throw them out in a fit of cleaning.I have bought a new day-to-page diary (oh, the self-indulgence! ) and plan to spend an hour each night organizing the following day, keeping all my ideas one place, so I guess that’s a start!
I really do need to have a big clean though, de-clutter and organize things more effectively.
Ah yes, I call this my distraction list. I get easily distracted, so while I’m working on one post all kinds of things pop into my head and I can often end up meandering my way over here, over there, and who knows where else. So I keep a piece of paper on my desk where I jot down these things and that satisfies my wandering mind that they have been recorded so I won’t forget about them and it keeps me on the task at hand.
And like you, a lot of times I just end up trashing it. The point isn’t to beat myself up for not covering the things on the distraction list, but rather pat myself on the back that I figured out a way to stay on track and did. And sometimes I manage to take care of some of those distractions, they’re often quite good ideas.
Not wanting to clutter up my workspace with more, I keep notepad open and when these random ideas and thoughts pop up, I add them to the ongoing list. As I check something off the list, highlight and delete. At the end of each work day, I hit save.
If you saw my handwriting, you’d know what I choose this method. I write in such a hurry, I often can’t read my own writing and I’ll never catch that chicken with the pen tied to its ass.
Excellent post dzinerbear, all sound points indeed. I normally devote my time to thinking about all of those items you’ve listed, telling myself I need to do them and I need to do them now, but never do. I’ve always been good about my wardrobe, so no clothes laying around, but I don’t tend to put my throw neatly back on my couch as I used to when I worked outside of home.
Look forward to more discussions.
If I write things down on posty notes I see it for a day or two and then it just becomes a part of my desk. When a thought or idea comes to mind I send myself and email.. Takes two seconds and then it sits in my inbox where I know I can’t overlook or forgot about it. Plus, I like to keep my inbox as empty as possible so I know that they can’t just sit there and pile up either without me attending to them
Kevin.
@dzinerbear
LOL My problem EXACTLY. I’ve got so many irons in the fire – projects I want to get done – that I don’t get any of them done. Part of the reason why I’m going to Phoenix Forum this year is because I have certain things I’m gonna force myself to complete by that point in time so I can show/discuss them with sponsors.
“1. Change your environment.”
And that is exactly what my husband and I have as one of our goals this week. (If not this week, before he’s back teaching at school in a few weeks)…
This is the current disaster zone that we call our home office… (I’m to the left, he’s to the right)…
i.imgur.com/xgfaRTa.jpg
I’ll post a pic when we get it done. I mean I’m capable of being really neat and organized. When we sold our old apartment a few years ago I was a bit of a Nazi when it came to being clean and orderly. This is what the office looked like back then… (Granted, this was when it was extra clean for the photo shoot, but it was close to this most of the time…)
i.imgur.com/uuo3THw.jpg
Thanks Jay for sharing. I’d get lost in an office area that big. I work in a 3ft x 5ft space at a tower desk that stands 7ft.
@Jay,
I’m jealous of that fantastically large room, I hope you have a couch tucked in the back. I love having naps on my den couch, although my office is far too small for a couch, a desk and two giant IKEA book shelves.
Honestly though, I think I prefer the new messy office, it looks like there’s more happening in there; the old one looks like something from a magazine spread where nothing really happens. But I guess that contradicts my first suggestion about removing clutter.
Both rooms are just a bit over 200sf – so not all that big. If the clean one looks bigger it’s probably the fisheye lens the photographer used.
The couch is in a different room. But the nice part is with a laptop I can curl up on the couch and do light work.
