Set up your environment to work successfully from home

Your environment is crucial to your success!

So many of us have had to make the transition from working in an office to working from home. As someone who spent many years working from home, then a couple of years working in an office, it has been a relatively easy transition back to home for me from a mindset point of view, but was not so easy for the office set-up! More on that later...

Without realising it, we are different people at work and at home, which is why it can prove to be such a challenge for people to switch between the two hats in your home space.

Setting up your environment for success is vital for the road ahead. Some of us may be back in an office environment reasonably soon, but others may well spend much more time working from home in future.

So what works?

I thought I'd share two stories from our team - my own and that of one of my team. Darragh, our marketing manager is based in Brisbane, so he had firsthand experience with transitioning to working remotely, even before all of this went down. It was not plain sailing! Let’s see what he has to say.

 Darragh’s story: 

 “At first I really struggled with not having separation between work and home. After all, it is the separation that tells our mind that we are either at work, or home, and what we need to be thinking about.

“I found myself doing washing at 11 am, unable to focus on what I was meant to be doing, not working for long periods, instead in short bursts over a longer period of time.

This meant that my working hours were stretched out over a longer period, making it harder to unwind at the end of the day.”

Darragh’s top tips: 

Tip number one.

Make sure you have a space that is used just for work. If you live in a house and have lots of space this is easier, you can use a spare bedroom or even an office if you are lucky enough to have one. But what about people like me who live in an apartment, and now that my partner is also working from home and taking up the second room, there isn’t really any space?

Well, I do it at the kitchen bench where we have two stools. I do work on the right hand one and eat dinner on the left hand one. As you can see from the photo above, I still need to get something to lift my computer up off the counter so my posture isn't constantly hunched, but it's about being able to adapt and develop your environment to suit your needs.  

I know the separation of stools sounds a little pedantic, but I find it actually really helps me to keep that mental distance between work and out of work. This can be done anywhere in the house. A specific corner of your living room, or like myself on the bench, even the dining table.

Tip number two.

Make sure you pack it all up when you are done. The reason is, this gives you that separation between work and home life. Make it a 5-minute process, slow and methodical. Do it the same way every day, kinda like you would with your evening commute. This also means that you have to take the time the next day to set up everything you need, yet again, slowly and methodically.

DO NOT WORK FROM BED. 

Or, anywhere near it for that matter. As tempting as it might be, that separation is vital. Get up, make a cup of tea, have breakfast, your usual morning routine. I walk a few times around my living room before I start work for the day. I guess this is kinda like my commute. It serves as time for me to collect my thoughts before I sit down for the day.

The tips above are just some creative ways I have come up with to start to create that separation between work Darragh and home Darragh.

My own story

For me, the biggest challenge has been trying to find the spaces to make it easy for me to be productive. I already know the importance of getting up and dressing for work as that helps me to have the right mindset, and following a routine with start and finish times.

The new thing I've been working on in setting up a new work environment at home, is to think of the energy that different tasks take, and how best to support that energy flow. This has meant setting up different spaces.

I've found that for me, it has worked better to think about the type of work that I'm going to be doing at a particular time, then working from the place that supports that the best.

My conversation space

So, I have a space where it's really easy to have conversations with lots of different people. It's a space I feel comfortable talking, and I've found meetings here have been very productive. It might not look like a work space, but it's really working for me!

My thinking space

Then I've created a space where I can do the thinking and creating - doing the admin work, creating the powerpoints for new programmes, and actually delivering the new webinars I've been creating.

It took a bit of creativity to make this work, but it's been awesome! I'm now able to work in the right place to access my best creativity for each task, enabling the greatest productivity.

Being able to pack things away, or shut the door on our work, as Darragh also identified is important. We need that time away to recharge ourselves and spend time with our families.

My challenge to you is to get creative and try many different ways to create that separation for yourself. Some things will work, while others won’t, but that is okay!

What are some creative ways you are finding to do this?