The more inspiring and organised your workspace the more inspired you will be to do your best work.
In this post I share 8 tips for setting up a workspace that you love to spend time in and that helps you achieve your goals.
Inspiring workspace = inspired to do your best work
I strongly believe that the way your space is organised and set up will have a massive impact on your productivity and the way you feel about your work.
Working in a messy, cluttered and disorganised environment will keep your brain in a jumbled and chaotic state and is likely to negatively impact your output and productivity. Even if you only have a small space to work – it might even be just a desk in the corner of a room – it does’t mean that there aren’t some guiding principles for how you space should be set up that will help you achieve your best possible work outcomes.
When you sit down to work each and every day you want to feel inspired and creative.
You want to feel in control of what you are doing and you want to be free from distractions that will draw you away from what you are meant to be doing.
So let’s look at how to create an environment like this.
Tip 1: Start by decluttering
There is nothing like a good declutter to get your head in the right space for being productive.
If you have old papers, bills or things that no longer have any value or need around you it will hinder your productivity.
But just like we are all different we all also have different ways of organising our spaces and feeling in control of things. For some people many piles of paper actually do help them feel organised and in control and if that’s you then that’s great.
But for many more of us we are going to be much more productive and have a much better idea of where to find things we need if we have got rid of what is superfluous to our needs and retain only what has value.
In most cases a disorganised environment is more related to a time management problem than it has to do with a fundamentally disorganised person.
But in order to get a system in place that we can move forward with the first step is to clear out everything we don’t need, throw away and sort our piles of paper and generally get ourselves organised.
So the first thing you will need to do is to declutter your space and fundamentally reorganise to a system that you think you can manage moving forward.
But your decluttering process should also involve retaining things around you that you love and enjoy having around you.
So to put all this in action I suggest you take advice from Marie Kondo for this one – go through all the things you have in your workspace. Ask yourself whether the item brings you joy, whether you’ve used it in the last year or whether it is something that is important to keep – and if the answer is no, then it’s time for it to go!
Tip 2: Have a daily pack up routine
Once you’ve got your space organised and clutter free and everything is sorted out in a way that makes sense to you, the next step is to maintain this.
So my suggestion here is to implement a 5-10 minute pack away session at the end of each day. This will mean that you stay on top of paperwork and stuff as it comes in the door rather than ever let it get back to where it was before.
Take a few minutes each day and sort your items to where they belong, process or bin any papers you no longer need and get your desk back to a tidy state for the next day.
Tip 3: Organise your desktop
Keeping your desk tidy and organised is going to be a key to staying organised and feeling inspired to get your work done.
Think about what you need to keep on your desk – items you use regularly and need constant access to - and then think about ways to keep this all tidy and organised.
You may need to purchase some new equipment for this – so consider things like:
Desk top accessories
Inspiring stationery – like notebooks or desk pads that make you feel inspired to work
Filing trays
Storage boxes – but make sure you keep these labelled so you know what is inside them
Modular peg boards also work well if you have different types of equipment to store, especially if you use this often.
Tip 4: Partition between home and office
If you work from home one of the things that can be difficult to maintain is a good work life balance.
Even if you only have a corner of a room to create your work space try and keep this out of the bedroom and even out of the living room if you can. You want to be able to mentally shut off from your work at the end of each day and if you’re always looking at your desk when you are with family, or meant to be sleeping, then this can make you feel like you are constantly working and never getting away from it all.
Tip 5: Different zones
If space allows create different zones in your office that you use for different tasks.
Have a zone for computer work and a different zone for writing, design drawing or other non-computer based tasks. Different types of work tend to require different types of thinking and so by having zones set up for these different tasks it may help to get you in the ‘flow’ of that work faster. If you only have one desk then try and mimic this by creating a different sort of environment depending on what sort of work you are doing. Move your laptop or computer away if you’re trying to focus on drawing, for example.
Tip 6: Declutter your computer desktop
Another purge worth doing when you are in this re-organisation phase is to also declutter and tidy up your computer. I have a blog post about your online filing system in Dropbox so that will help you to resolve much of the clutter than should be on your computer.
But also make sure you clean up your computer desktop so that when you open your computer each morning you aren’t faced with this:
But you are instead faced with this, which is my own computer desktop.
For me I immediately feel calmer when I look at the second image than when I look at the first one (which gives me mild anxiety!!).
So have a go at tidying up your computer desktop and getting rid of all the clutter there.
Tip 7: Add inspiration and personality to your space
Think about how you can inspire yourself to keep going with your goals on the days when it feels like a grind. Bring some personality and beauty to your space as this will make you feel more inspired and creative.
Can you hang a pinboard and put up motivational quotes or reminders?
Can you pin up your vision board so you always have your big picture at top of mind. Do what would inspire you but think not only about creating function in your office space, but also inspiration as well.
Also – are there things you love that would make you feel good to have around you. A candle, a picture frame, something your kids made you. Whatever it might be – have some things in your space that make it feel like YOUR space.
Tip 8: Think about comfort and ergonomics
The other thing to think about is the comfort and ergonomics of your workspace.
You are going to be sitting there for many hours a day. So you may like to invest in some equipment to help you be comfortable, and more importantly to encourage good posture and ergonomics. So have a think about whether you need to upgrade your desk chair, whether a monitor or laptop stand might be helpful, whether a standing desk would be a good investment or whether you need other smaller bits of equipment like a pad to rest your wrists on as you type.
There are lots of different suppliers for these types of things these days – including many design forward options – so don’t assume these have to be ugly!
Overall what I am encouraging in all of these tips is to try and just organise and clean up all the different areas of your workspace that you look at on regular intervals throughout the day so that you can encourage your brain to be as calm and stress free as you can and encourage it to be focused only on what matters.
Use the tips that I’ve just been through to start to think about that and have a go at tidying up different parts of your workspace bit by bit.
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