Designing the Perfect Home Office for Productive Focus

Many people are unaware of the strong link between their mental state and their immediate environment. This is a two-way relationship, with both your room/desk/office mirroring your state of mind, and your state of mind affecting the layout and tidiness of the room/desk/office.

While changing our way of thinking and ridding ourselves of stress is more easily said than done, however, it’s fortunately much easier to tidy and re-organise the space around you which will have positive knock on effects on the aforementioned stress levels and productivity. Tidying and organising your work space then is definitely the quicker route to take for improved mood and efficiency.

The way this works is multi-facetted. Firstly, you are obviously going to be far more productive and less stressed if you can quickly and easily find everything you need. You can waste large amounts of time looking for papers and stationery if your desk isn’t organised and that wasted time equates to wasted money. This also leads to less time to finish what you’re doing and reach your goals which obviously leads to increased stress. Then there’s the chance you will lose something for good if it gets accidentally thrown out with the piles of junk, bills and funny e-mails you have lying everywhere.

If your environment is organised however it will make finding what you need to be a quick and efficient process making it easier to multi task and work through your work load. Having a tidier space around you also makes it easier to relax, and if you’re relaxed you will simply work better and manage to maintain more focus. So how do you create the optimal work environment?

Here are some powerful productive tips at your home office :

The Three Tray System

More and more productivity gurus are now adopting a three tray system. This mirrors the operation of the human brain, and it’s the perfect way to organize notes and papers. The three trays represent the following:

– Long term storage
– Short term storage
– Working storage

The long term storage is a filing cabinet full of things you can’t throw away but seldom need (keep in mind that the term “tray” does not need to be literal here!). The short-term storage tray is for anything that you will need again some time this week or perhaps month. Finally, the “working” storage should be kept close to your desk, and will contain everything that you are currently working on.

Sort through the desk at the start and end of each day!

Inspiration

A powerfully productive office is not just about organization and tidiness, though! Equally important, is to make the office somewhere that is conducive to work Ð that ideally places you in a productive state of mind. Find things that inspire you to do your best work, and then place them around the room!