Did you know that the average person spends roughly 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime? That's equivalent to spending one-third of your entire life in your work environment!
With so much time dedicated to our workspaces, it's crucial to create an environment that supports our physical and mental health, boosts our productivity, and sparks our creativity. In this post, we'll explore actionable tips to transform your workspace into a healthy and productive place that you want to spend time in (even if you don’t really want to be working!).
Let's build a workspace that results in increased focus, reduced stress, improved mood, and enhances creativity.
Tip 1: Declutter Your Desk for Better Focus
A recent Yale University study found that visual clutter competes for your attention, making it harder to focus and process information. Essentially, the more visual input we pour into our brain, even if it’s in the edge of vision, the more our brain has to do to work out what’s what. This means simply by having an untidy desk, you're going to work harder to do the same amount of work. Add to this that untidy spaces make the logistics of working harder and more overwhelming… lost tools, buried papers… and where on earth did that pen just go?! So, get tidying.
Actionable steps:
- Start by completely clearing your desk of everything.
- Only put back items that it breaks your workflow not to have within arms reach. We’re talking keyboards, pens and notepads.
- Now it’s time to get organised with all those things that didn’t make the cut - they were (probably) on your desk for a reason, so you do need them. Just not on your desk. Invest in some good modular storage to keep things where you can find them quickly when they’re needed and then put it somewhere out of your field of view.
- Start a new habit of resetting your desk at the end of every work day. This way each morning you arrive at a consistent and visually calm place to begin work.
Tip 2: Optimise Your Workspace Lighting for Productivity
Feeling sleepy in the afternoons? Ending the day with a headache? It might be your lights. The type, colour and intensity of the light in your workspace can have a huge effect on your ability to concentrate and how you feel at the end of a long day. Getting the lighting right will make it easier to get things done, reduce discomfort of extended periods of work and improve your mood. Studies have shown that a suitably brightly lit environment can significantly increase attention and focus.
Actionable steps:
- Move your space closer to brighter natural light if possible. When you do this, also ensure the light isn’t going to reflect off your work surface or screen and make it harder to look at. This means ideally close to a window with it infront of you or to one side.
- Add task lighting with a good quality desk lamp that uses an LED bulb. If you can stretch to it, get one that can change its “colour temperature” so you can set it to a nice cool bright white light when you need to focus.
- Add bias lighting to bright screens. This means if you have a bright monitor you want to try and light whatever is behind or around the screen to a similar brightness. This reduces sys strain and will reduce those 5pm headaches!
Tip 3: Bring Nature into Your Workspace for a Calming Effect
So far the suggestions could make for quite a sterile and barren environment. That’s not what we’re going for so let’s add something back that is shown to aid wellness in the workplace. Indoor plants can boost positive emotions, reduce negative feelings, and relieve physical discomfort. They also provide a perfect opportunity to take mindful breaks - but more on that later. There’s also good evidence to show that they can improve the air quality in your space, further boosting their wellness benefits.
Actionable steps:
- Get some easy to care for plants that can be placed around your environment.
- Don’t over do it - remember Tip 1. Plants can be clutter too!
- Look after your plants. An unloved half dead plant is going to have the opposite effect on your mood every time you walk past it. Make it a part of your work routine to care for the plants - it’s a great way to take a break without adding to your brain’s workload.
Tip 4: Take Mindful Breaks to Boost Productivity and Well-being
This one is a combination of your physical workspace and the way you behave within it. Put simply, sitting in one place all day is bad for your physical and mental health. Recent research by Microsoft proves your brain needs regular breaks from work to maintain productivity and wellbeing. How often you take the breaks and what you do during them is also important. It needs to be something that allows your brain space to process what it’s been doing, without adding more information. This could be watering the aforementioned plants, doing 5 minutes of mindful breathing or even a short stretching routine.
Actionable steps:
- Get a work timer that will nudge you once an hour to take a short break.
- Create a pleasant space to sit away from your desk for 5 minutes or have room to stretch.
- Learn and practise mindfulness activities like conscious breathing which you can do during your breaks.
- Get yourself a Luma³ - it takes care of the break timings and the guided mindful breathing.
Important:
What you should NOT be doing is doom scrolling on your phone. It’s a bad habit too many people have developed in recent years, largely thanks to addictive app design with infinitely scrolling lists of stimulation. Doing this just adds more information to your brain’s workload, breaks your flow from what you were doing and increased anxiety levels.
Tip 5: Prioritise Ergonomics for a Healthy and Productive Workspace
Have you heard of “tech neck”? It’s the term now being used to describe the effects of extended periods of poor posture created from using devices without considering the ergonomics of how you are standing or sitting. Ergonomics is the science of designing and arranging things people use so that the people and things interact most efficiently and safely. For you, this means getting some basic things right about how you work.
Actionable steps:
- Check your workspace setup against the image above and make adjustments until you are working in the way shown.
- Invest in a proper office chair that can be adjusted and has good cushioning and support. You're going to be spending 90,000 hours in it after all! Seems like it might be worth the money right?
- If it suits you and you can afford one, getting a height adjustable desk that allows you to spend some of the day sitting and some of it standing can help a lot.
Start with something small
That’s a lot of actions to take isn’t it! Don’t worry, you don’t have to do all this to be healthy. However, working towards as many of them as is practical for you will certainly help you to enjoy and feel healthy while at work. Start with something small and easy to achieve and go from there. Every journey begins with a single step.
