Covid has changed so much about the way we work. Some employers have said that employees won’t be returning to the office this year at least, so this work from home time may become protracted.
Considering this extended period, some businesses have been forced to reconsider their business model in part, especially wholesalers of office furniture who are now sometimes selling direct to customers via online web stores. Some employees are even incentivizing employees to setup their home office, so there’s never been a better timeto consider transforming that old student desk in the spare bedroom and making a legitimate home office.
But in so doing, I would consider the workspace more than just the space where you work.
If we’re social distancing as we’re being told is appropriate, we’re spending a lot more time in our homes than we’d previously been in the habit of. And if we have children in the home who are trying to do distance learning, space can become difficult to manage. It’s important to give consideration to the place where you spend so much of your time, and it’s worth the time and the effort to make sure you have a place that you will enjoy being in, where you can be as productive and content as you’d like to be.
Working from home was a difficult adjustment for me. There were about 10 weeks worth of arranging furniture and buying everything from desks and chairs to hundreds of feet of Ethernet cable, drilling holes through floors, rebuilding computers, purchasing new monitors, and so on. There seemed no end to the effort. At the end of it all, after 12 weeks of working at home, I had to report back to work.
But I’m also a student, so I spend a great deal of time outside the office in front of my computer as well. I have two separate areas in my home where I do my computing. My basement is my main office area so to speak. This is where the fastest computer is with the nicest displays and a really nice keyboard/mouse. I have a nice desk that used to be two desks put together to form a corner piece although they’ve been taken apart recently, partly because I no longer work from home, and partly because the arranging and rearranging continues for me. Upstairs a smaller desk with only a laptop computer, which is considerably more streamlined and less industrial looking. This is where I do some of my writing and relaxing on computers.
The point I’m making is if this is our new normal, and we’re going to be doing more from our computers and spending more time in front of them, the we ought to try to be intentional about our space and make a place that not only functions well for us but also a space we enjoy being in. The importance of enjoying the space you’re in cannot be underestimated. You’ll feel better, and be more productive when you’re someplace you want to be.