Just because your office is your second home doesn’t mean it is incredibly fun and comfortable. If you are no longer doing anything to improve your workplace then you don’t have to blame your employer either. Indeed, for many of us, there is no place less serendipitous than our office desk. So here’s a quick list of fast ways you can make life just a little easier and keep those creative energies pumping at the workplace.
Cleaning your workspace and organizing your documents helps workflow immensely. With everything clean and organized, nothing else can you do but focus. You have to take out clutter from your life completely. Clean your house, your car, your wardrobe, do the dishes or clear the extras in your fridge. It’s not as scary as you might think!
It’s smarter to work highly focused for a short span of time, with short breaks in between, than to be partially focused for a long span of time. Consider it a run, rather than a marathon. You can drive yourself to your limits for shorter time frames, so long as you have a clear stopping point. And after a rest, you can run again.
Okay, give a thought about it: How many hours do you spend on your phone each day? Probably more than you’d like to concede even to yourself. Now that we feel terrible about ourselves, there is an answer, mark a change, and stop wasting your time playing Candy Crush or any other favourite game of yours.
That nearest cubicle in coworking space may go by the name of Android or iPhone, but by any name, it’s just as distracting. When our phones are constantly humming, they don’t let us monotask on the mind boggling problems we have to deal with–undoing any creativity before it gets done. So put that thing into airplane mode–so that you can really fly.
So if you are going to use your phone use it well, a phone certainly should not be a tool for distraction.
You can normally see your coworkers especially in a coworking space eating really stinky lunches and leaving the leftovers on their desks for days. It’s obvious that your first reaction would spray down the entire bottle of air freshener. But what if you take the natural route instead. Step into your local garden store or supermarket and pick up some fresh herbs such as rosemary, basil, mint, and lavender. The awesome part is that you can put them in your tea.
You are most likely to get some great ideas! You are just not getting them out there, you need to learn how to influence your coworkers without being lame of course. But persuasion is a social aptitude which can be learned. Persuasion is closely identified with charm. As we learned some time ago, interpersonal prowess comes in numerous flavors, including those for both introverts and outgoing people. Introverts, for example, can be exceptionally charismatic and persuasive because of their ability to completely focus their attention on a person, which signals the building of trust.
This sounds lame, how could we possibly think of Monday on Friday. Well, it’s difficult but this is something to try that your Monday work will thank you for. Spend the last 25 minutes of Friday getting organized for the week ahead. Set a target for Monday (as what you need to get done will still be fresh in your mind). Leave a treat for yourself on your desk–it’s going to be the best way to start a Monday you’ve had in quite a while.
