Leadership, Personal Development, Success Library, Time Management

Make Your Office Work for You

Whether you work in a cozy cubicle or in a huge room of an office, what you do with it and how you feel about your office can affect your work. While you can’t change the size of the space, focusing on the layout and atmosphere are both great ways to make your office the right space for you.

Functionality is the most important thing in any office, especially if you’re very busy and need to find things quickly. Once that’s been addressed, you can bring some of your own personal flairs into the equation. Adding your personal touches can make you feel more at home when you’re at work and keep you feeling more peaceful.

Form Follows Function

What you do in your office – meeting clients, working on presentations, or countless other things – will dictate how you create your space and what you include in it. Naturally, those things have to come first. If your office isn’t set up for the work you do, you’ll end up unproductive and unhappy. You can avoid that, though, by planning around what you do each day.

Make a list of the tasks you do in your office, and prioritize them by what you do the most. Set up your office to handle the most common tasks in the easiest possible way. Then, you can do what you need to do quickly and efficiently, letting you move on to the next task with ease.

Make it Comfortable

Even though your office is a place to work, you should feel comfortable there. You’ll get more done and be in a much better mood if you aren’t dealing with plain walls and glaring lights. Depending on where your office is located, you might not be able to change all those things. Best to adjust what you can in order to feel more comfortable.

Plants, as well as small knickknacks, soothing colors, and warm, soft lighting, enhance the office environment. All of these things can make you (and your clients) feel calm and assured. Feeling good enables you to do better work and be more productive, which matters in any office.

Pay Attention to the Specifics

The position you sit in while you’re sitting in your desk chair, how high the desktop is, the refresh rate on your monitor, and all those little subtleties really matter when it comes to how you feel.

Here are some ways to make your office even more suited to you:

Avoid setting your office up as a copy of someone else’s. Even if you like that person’s style, you need your own space and design that works for your needs.
Keep things that are too personal out of your office. Overly personal items should be avoided, along with anything that a customer or other employee might find offensive.
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. If there are ergonomic chairs or keyboards that will help you do your job more effectively, or if the lighting in the office is a serious issue for you, be sure to bring that up. It never hurts to ask what can be done.

No matter what kind of office environment you have, there are always ways to make it more “user-friendly” for you. It also means comfort to any customers who might enter it. That can be good for business, but it’s mostly good for you. Feeling better at work makes you a more valuable team member. Surely, your boss will likely accommodate your reasonable requests for change.

Avoid giving up or getting discouraged. Even if you don’t get the office you’ve always dreamed of, you can still make your office work for you. Sometimes it requires some ingenuity and creative thinking. Certainly, you can come up with something that you can be really happy with!

Sarah Pinto

Sarah Pinto is a certified fundraising executive and chartered advisor in philanthropy with over ten years of experience in the nonprofit sector. In addition to being a full-time fundraiser, Sarah serves as contributing editor to Giving Tomorrow magazine.

Inquire ...

Make Your Office Work for You

Form Follows Function

Make it Comfortable

Pay Attention to the Specifics

Here are some ways to make your office even more suited to you:

Just getting into planned giving?

5 Low-Cost Virtual Major Donor Events

Declutter Your Life

What Americans Think About Philanthropy and Nonprofits

How to Make Yourself Accountable to Yourself

Make Procrastination a Thing of the Past

Create Process Goals and Enjoy Greater Success

Leave a Reply Cancel reply