Harmonising your work or study space

In this month’s mindfulness and wellbeing updates, we’ll be thinking about how to create a harmonious work or study space. Even if you conduct most of your activities outside of your home environment, you might still need to keep a quiet area in the house for tasks like reading or life admin, and we hope that some of our tips will come in handy regardless of what you intend to use your space for.

The lockdown years made home working a reality for many people yet also exposed many of the inequalities surrounding the WFH lifestyle, particularly in relation to personal space and privacy. This has often meant that young people, students and other people in shared living environments tend to be disadvantaged in comparison with those in more comfortable home-working set-ups. We hope that at least some of our tips are applicable to all situations, but if you’d like to share specific advice from your own perspective then please feel free to do so in the comments, since it’s always good to learn from different people’s experiences.

Our ideas are as follows:

Tip 1: Think about lighting and ventilation

If it’s possible for you to sit near a window, try to do this whenever possible, since the natural light will help boost your energy levels and mood, as will the potential for greater air circulation if the weather is conducive to you opening the window. Taking a look at the outside world every so often can also keep you in touch with your surroundings, as well as giving your eyes a valuable break from excessive screen time. Try not to work in conditions where you’re either too cold or too warm, and take breaks every so often to stretch yourself properly, ideally outdoors.

Tip 2: Decorate your space and make it your own

If circumstances normally force you to work or study away from home, particularly in transient environments such as hot-desking set-ups, libraries or cafés, it’s good to contrast this by making your home working environment as personal as possible. Always try to decorate your space and surround yourself with things that inspire you, whether that’s artwork or house plants. It’s also nice to add a personal touch by adding photos of family members or friends, with research apparently suggesting that people are more likely to work honestly when surrounded by images of loved ones. Even if you don’t have your own space to work or study from, you can still add small touches of personalisation, such as changing your computer desktop background to something that inspires or motivates you.

Tip 3: Try not to eat where you work

Most of us have been guilty of occasionally eating ‘al desko’, but it’s a bad habit to get into for a number of reasons. As well as making you concentrate less on what you’re eating, having meals at a computer prevents you from using break times to properly separate yourself from your working environment, as well as leading to a greater possibility of food debris and drink spillages getting into your hardware. Plus, it’s hard to eat or drink at a desk without dishes eventually piling up, which leads us into our next tip…

Tip 4: Declutter your working environment as often as possible

If you're working to a deadline it's tempting to give into the urge to surround yourself with rubbish, but doing this will nearly always stress you out more. A visually disruptive environment can be a much bigger drain on your sense of calm than you realise, and can steal valuable focus. Doing some basic maintenance at least once a day will improve your environment and remind you of where all of your things are. Plus, even the act of washing dishes or throwing papers away can relax you and give you a chance to change your focus for a bit

Tip 5: Do what you can to avoid background noise

Depending on where and whom you live with, you might enjoy the relative quiet of being at home compared with more public environments, but even within the comfort of our own four walls we can still be subject to elevated background noise such as household appliances, outdoor construction work, or the activities of people that we live with. If you’re sensitive to background noise then it could be worth considering noise-cancelling headphones or listening to white noise tracks on YouTube.

Depending on the type of work you’re doing, you might also benefit from background music in order to block out noise and keep up a sense of momentum. There is a lot of background music available on YouTube and other streaming platforms, from video game music to medieval renditions of hip-hop songs, so the odds are that you’ll probably find something to help you focus.

Tip 6: Work with what you have

Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to dedicate a substantial part of their living environment to creating a work or study space. If you live with a lot of other people then you might struggle to find both available space and private time, but even if you’re only able to adopt some of the above suggestions, it’s still worth thinking about which elements of your current set-up work well for you and which you might be able to improve to make for a nicer work or study experience.

We hope some of our advice will prove useful to different activities and situations, but as always, please leave comments if you think we’ve left anything out. Thanks for reading, and happy working and studying for another month!