"I'm taking a chance giving this out for free, I hope you gain from it!"
Many savvy small business owners and independent individuals are evolving into the new “home office” paradigm and discarding the old paradigm. There is nothing wrong with dressing to the nines and going out to represent your company, but the truth of the matter is, most of the day to day tasks that take place when operating your small business happen in the office, on the phone or on the computer. A quality home office organization involves Minimizing Distractions, and Maximizing Focus.
Since your home office is part of your home, anything that hasn’t been completed in your home or that is entertaining in your home, has the potential to distract you quickly and for long periods of time. That’s why it is crucial to design your office and your daily routines to keep this in check. Some common at-home distractions:
If it has nothing to do with your business, it does not belong in your office. If you cannot dedicate a space entirely for work at your home, then please seriously consider if working from home is actually going to make you more productive, or just a little bit lazier. If you can, dedicate your most isolated room, ideally with a bathroom in it solely to your home-office. Lock the door during the hours that you are working. Write a list of the only emergencies that are worth distracting you and notify anyone who will be in the house during that time. Post it on the outside of the door if you have to. Keep your dog away from the door by putting him outside, or training him not to whine on the other side of your door while you're achieving your dreams.
The exact timing of a work break is up for debate, but this article seems to point to data saying 52 minutes of work followed by 17 minutes of break is ideal for productivity. Although everyone's appetite varies, the ingredients seem to be about 3 parts work and 1 part break. It’s important to spend this time away from the computer and being physically active. Don’t know where to start? Put down the phone, take a walk around the block, find a spot outside or in your backyard, do 1 set of pushups, and 1 set of jump squats until you max out. Then slow yourself down with 2 yoga poses for a stretch and in order to center yourself again after the blood's pumping. Expand on this by also planning 4 day/1 week vacations once every couple months or even every month. These scheduled breaks will regenerate your creativity and force you to create the utmost efficient routines and systems so that you can even accomplish this goal.
It is crucial that you are optimizing your organizational workflows, otherwise the sea of tabs and notes on your computer will render you motionless for blocks of time. Every entrepreneur has different tools they use but the key takeaway is to create seamless workflows that capture, store and organize information so that it is accessible with ease in the future.
Password management systems are a good place to start, such as Passpack or Vault. From there, a highly efficient project management system like Asana is crucial to success. Take full advantage of every tool that you pay for! Join the webinars, ask questions, understand the tool fully so that you can optimize it for you own personal goals. Most people end up buying separate tools for purposes that could have easily been taken care of with one if they just took the time to learn the tool itself.
A proper note organizer such as Evernote will do wonders for you if you grasp its total capabilities. Information is power, so if you can manage the flows of information so that you are never overwhelmed, well then, you are on the way to those monthly vacations we talked about. Of course, there are programs like Quickbooks, Office, Salesforce and Google’s suite, and then all of your business specific programs. The key in this is to experiment with integrating the minimal amount of software, with the most optimized workflows, in order to get organized the quickest, therefore minimizing the distractions that come with clutter.
Batch mundane tasks, like answering emails and phone calls to cut down your time. Automate and outsource any and everything that you can. Do so patiently and systematically, starting with the hardest tasks to mess up first. Refine your process and focus on building long-term relationships for better workflows. Don’t be scared to pay your freelancer a little more to gain their exclusivity and, more importantly, their loyalty. After they have proven your trust, of course. Once you have the workflows in place and you know the times that you are supposed to be doing certain tasks, put a block on your computer and phone during those times so that you remain focused. Every time you try and login to Twitter, it will notify you about your need to get back to your goals. Yes, you will be able to turn the block off (unless you give your spouse the passcode), but then that’s a matter of your will power because the block did its job in reminding you to get back to work, but you have already decided to be great.
“Most of life's actions are within our reach, but decisions take willpower.” - Robert Mckee
Ok, so you have laid the framework for your home office organization project. At this point, your office space should look like a bare bones work site of pure functionality. Now it's time to get to the fun stuff, which is almost everyone’s favorite part. This is the time now to balance your creative urges with real grounded methods and materials that will increase productivity in the work environment. So before you make a single design purchase, let's go through the factors that we must consider if maximum productivity is the goal.
Let’s reverse engineer the “minimal distraction” consideration when we are considering how to optimize our focus. How do you get distracted? What is the mechanism that your body gets distracted with? Getting distracted normally happens when your SENSES are receiving too much stimulation or there is a disharmony between the stimulus and the goal at hand. An example of this would be when your goal is to stay focused while reading for the next 45 minutes, but you stay in the living room, keeping the T.V. on while someone is baking a blueberry pie in the kitchen. The T.V. will distract your eyes and ears, the couch may distract your touch and overall comfort while the blueberry pie is flooding your nose with the sweet smell of procrastination - not to mention the intention of the living room space itself is for leisure and relaxation.
Then, you wonder why you can’t stay focused. If distractions are caused by chaotic sensations, then focus can be achieved through a harmony of sensory input. There is an ancient Chinese art to this called, Feng Shui, but we will highlight some general tips for you to consider when designing your home office for maximum focus and creativity.
The reason why the subtitle for this section is “Smelling and breathing are one in the same” is so that we can understand this form of sensory input holistically. This way of thinking will highlight the importance of fresh air on your ability to focus. With that being said, position your home office so that you are near a window that can be opened. During those moments that you need to breathe some new life into the day, crack the window, take a few deep breathes, in from the nose, and out from the mouth, and watch how it affects your clarity as you move forward. Since the philosophy behind this is a holistic one, it will tie in with the above-mentioned tip about walking outside periodically to retain focus.
This also ties into your sight, because of how the natural day light, blue sky and green trees will keep your subconscious clean, mean and serine. Okay, not really mean, it just kind of rolled off the keyboard(note: thought of that right after a walk around the building!)To further capitalize on the wisdom of how your sense of smell can induce focus, we recommend a few air purifying plants, fragrant plants/spices, and also incense. Again we do not want to overload the senses to the point of distraction, that is not the goal here. Plants like golden pothos and aloe vera are ornamental enough to appease your sight aesthetic while keeping the air void of too-often found toxins. For more choices on which plants to choose for air purification, read this article by mnn.com or this article from greatist.com. Note that a home office environment will have plenty of free radicals from the computer's, dust accumulation from the desk and cabinets, as well as other toxins that come from ink paper and the ventilation system of your home. Some of the top performers from the Nasa Clean Air Study were peace lily and florists chrysanthemum. We recommended the earlier articles first because they take into account the effort it takes to actually maintain the plant itself, and not just sheer purification capability. In this article on aromatherapy written by entrepenuer.com, they talk in more depth about essential oils and aromatherapies’ effect on the brain. To sum it up, noses, specifically the olfactory bulbs within noses, are directly related to the brain’s ability to learn and process emotions.
Utilizing essential oils in one way or another throughout the home-office may show a dramatic improvement in your focus and learning. Certain scents, such as rosemary, lavender, cinnamon, and lemon are highlighted due to their effects being proven by the West Coast Institute of Aromatherapy. Note that the goal is to sustain a calm focus and to stimulate creative energy. Let the scents you choose reflect the goal. Burning incense is another powerful way to trigger your senses. There is a long and kind of weird esoteric side attached to the use of incenses which involves setting the space for a ritual, but if you think about it, you are performing a ritual every time you sit down to work. Your intention is clearly towards creating abundance in your life, so why not charge your space by burning some cinnamon in the morning while brainstorming or some lotus for clarity. Do some independent research on this subject to find what suits you the most, beware of clicking on witchcraft-related posts and cursing your computer in the process(another one came up with after a walk outside!)Key Take Away: Your sense of smell is directly connected to the part of your brain that controls emotions and learning. You can induce focus and creativity by experimenting with your environment’s aroma.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that music affects your performance while working out, working at the office, sleeping, dancing and the rest of life's activities. For the same reason that you want to minimize the background noise of T.V.s or barking dogs, you also want to surround yourself with sounds that promote concentration and creativity. Your brain functions through a series of neural connections, all of which communicate through electrical impulses. These impulses have been studied. They are commonly referred to as “brain waves” and have been classified into four distinct categories. There 3 are important.
Beta: Normal concentration, can slip into anxiety and stress.
Alpha: Increased serotonin, calm creativity, “In The Zone!”Theta: Very much a trance, direct creative inspiration, dream sleep “Eureka!”
Delta: Very deep trance, dreamless sleep, physical growth, loss of body awareness. There is a spectrum to how much effort you would like to apply into your sound diet to improve productivity.
Binaural beats and use of the 432 Hz frequency can be used to help to induce the Alpha State, which should be your goal during work hours. These forms of music can be found on Youtube easily by simply searching “meditation music”, “432 Hz music” or “Binaural Beats”. If you don’t want to do that, just keep in mind a few simple pointers like, avoid playing music that you haven't heard yet because it will distract you. Try to repeat songs, because that repetition will help the music to fall into the subconscious as opposed to staying in the front of your mind. Other natural sounds like running water and wind chimes are also considerations when designing your home office. We again have to repeat the main warning, keep it simple. Do not overdo it. This holistic perspective can again be extrapolated and applied towards your break times as well. Humming a favorite get-me-up jingle will literally change your well-being in order to maintain a positive attitude all throughout the work day.
Key Take Away: Sound has an effect on the neural network of your brain and can help to induce desired “brainwaves” for maximum productivity.
“Your eyes can deceive you”... They can distract you too. In fact, the most common distractions are visual. The delicious food ad running on your facebook is just one example. So how do we optimize the home office in order to visually stimulate more concentration? We can consider the natural lighting, artificial lighting, color schemes, and motion within the home office. We touched on natural lighting in the olfactory section of this post because of the window dual purpose of fresh air, that has such a profound impact on your well-being.
Natural lighting boosts energy in the morning, jump starts your metabolism, balances your circadian rhythm and hormone secretion at night, all leading to improved well-being and, therefore increased productivity. This article highlights some studies that prove natural lighting improves office productivity as well as post office well-being. The amount of artificial lighting in your office needs to be taken into consideration as well, due to its potentially harmful effects it has on your well-being. This will, in time, destroy your efficiency; a depressed person who can barely see is not a very productive person. For those of us who like to work at night, there is something about the nighttime that stimulates the creative energy, great for writing and developing strategies. However, exposure to blue light from computers not only destroy your eyes, it will affect your circadian rhythm. Common sense tells us that our bodies are designed to receive sunlight during the day, moonlight, starlight and natural firelight during the night, but a computer's light tends to receive more like sunlight into our bodies, which explains why it will mess up your sleep patterns if you expose yourself to too much at night. Check out this post by Harvard to gain a slightly more in-depth perspective.
The color of your home office will also act to stimulate your brain for better focus and productivity. Of course there are plenty of liberties to be taken with this tip, but it is important to understand that your environment’s coloring will directly affect your outlook on the environment and, therefore your ability to focus within the environment.Most people understand how colors make them and others feel. Black is sophisticated, red is passionate, green is natural. Click this article for a brief description on colors and their meanings. For more in depth info into color schemes click here for color scheme ideas by HGTV, and while you are at it, learn the basics of color theory here. Motion within the work environment is another subconscious distraction that’s often overlooked but always noticed. The fresh air of an open window is worth the occasional bird flying past your vision or dump truck making a little noise, but within the actual office, the less motion, the better. No TV's, no pets, no grandfather clocks (even though they are stylish) - nothing that unnecessarily moves and is in your line of sight.
Last but not least, here are two senses that people don’t normally think about when attempting to optimize their routine. Just like your other senses, your taste and your touch can be used to hone in on your focus. How do you maximize your taste? This sense is definitely going to have the shortest pointers, so we would actually love for you to comment with any unique research and or opinions on how else you can optimize your taste. There are competing ideas behind the effect of chewing gum on your productivity. What seems to be indicated is that chewing gum can help to stimulate the metabolism and, therefore increase your alertness early in the morning; this is good for writing or early morning conference calls. There is another piece of evidence that suggests chewing gum has a negative effect on your memory retention, due to competing stimulus. So chewing gum may not be a great idea while learning, whereas drinking herbal tea may be the better option. We recommend that if you are chewing gum, buy an all natural gum with real components of ginger, peppermint, or cinnamon, because, just like aromatherapy, chewing those flavors will activate a whole host of positive neural responses that will extend into your olfactory system as well- that's why you sneeze when the flavor is powerful! If you’re more of the mark Twain type, there's nothing wrong with chewing a twig or straw just as long as you don’t swallow it.
What would it mean to alter your sense of touch so that you are outputting to the best of your potential? Well, what are you touching in the home office? You touch your table, chair, keyboard, mouse, and your headphones if that's what you use to listen to music. The office table is a part of your initial home office organization system and should be accounted for while you're considering the office cabinets and layout. We like to use a strong wood to really ground the sustainable vibe we would like to project from our business. Your chair can kill you or make you stronger, literally. Posture and joint ailments such as lower back issues are very common amongst chair dwellers. Although you should be disciplining yourself to keep a tight posture, it's hard to get into lotus position, let alone hold it for any amount of time. Spine straight, hips firm and head level are the keys. I recommend using a stand-up desk addition as an option so that you can go back and forth between sitting and standing.
Combine that with an ergonomic chair, a knee chair for building lower back strength, and performing micro exercises on your break, you are actually going to get stronger working at your desk - who would have thought?! As a warning, this can start as a distraction, but we would consider it worth it though if calculating for longevity. Your keyboards, mouse, and headphones should all be purchased with this in mind; you are a professional, and you want to perform at your physical and mental best, therefore your gear should be that of a professional.
There is a group of professional athletes who have optimized everything you can for a computer area, professional video gamers! Treat yourself like a professional video game athlete - we say athlete, because as an office worker with a business, you are moving your mouse and keyboard while maintaining pure concentration as fast and as long as a pro gamer. By adopting the ergonomic keyboards and mouses, headwear and eyewear, you will minimize that feeling of carpal tunnel setting in, as well as the strain on your sight and ears that can accompany long hours on the computer. Plus, thinking of work as a game, and designing your computer to reflect that thought process, may help you to set daily records and beat your high scores(a.k.a. - $$$)!
To Wrap It All, You’ve made the first steps to beginning your home office empire and you are ready to create space that will provide you the peace of mind to pursue your goals with ease. Designing productivity is all about focusing on two general goals - minimizing distractions and maximizing focus. Minimizing distractions comes down to isolating yourself, having enough storage space, creating workflows, and taking strategic breaks that are optimized towards your body. Maximizing focus all comes down to optimizing workflows supremely by designing the space so that you - meaning your physical body, your biological body, your animal body, your monkey body - are stimulated in the direction of more focus and creativity.
There are a plethora of ways to do this, all of which cater towards the senses. The best way to incorporate this “sensation-based” philosophy is to consider yourself a professional athlete, similar to a pro gamer and then optimize your space for your peak performance. We truly hope you learned at least one new thing that you can apply to the new home office way of life from here on out. . Cheers to unlimited abundance!
