Is Your Stapler in the Right Place?

There are entire sci­ences built up around the effi­cient use of space and how work­space affects pro­duc­tiv­ity. How much thought have you given to whether your home office work­space is set up in a way that allows you to be as effi­cient as possible?

Obvi­ously everyone’s sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. Hope­fully you’ve carved out a home office work­space that allows you to actu­ally be pro­duc­tive and work. You might use a desk or the kitchen table or even the cof­fee table. It doesn’t mat­ter, as long as you set it up in a work­able fashion.

The great thing about Ergonom­ics is that you can eas­ily apply this sci­ence to your work­space. It is often sim­ple com­mon sense and com­fort that pro­vides the best work­space, from an ergonomic stand­point. For instance, you should have your mon­i­tor, key­board and mouse in posi­tions that are both work­able and com­fort­able to reduce stress on your body. You don’t want to crane your neck or over-​​reach for the mouse. And your key­board should be a height that makes typ­ing com­fort­able. See? Sim­ple com­mon sense.

I doubt that you want to take a col­lege class in ergonom­ics, but you might check out what kinds of equip­ment and prod­ucts are avail­able to make your work space more ergonomic.

The Tiers

I’ve learned to apply a sim­ple three-​​tier sys­tem to eval­u­ate work­space. It takes only a few min­utes and works as well for a desk as it does for a counter or work­bench. Want to try the three-​​tier sys­tem for your­self? I think you will find it a great way to get started on your path to a more com­fort­able and effi­cient desk. These are the steps:

1. Look and List
2. Pri­or­i­tize
3. Set up your workspace
4. Evaluate…rinse and repeat as needed

OK. Let’s do it together. Start by tak­ing your nor­mal work posi­tion. For instance, sit at your desk. Now sim­ply look. Take a look around your main work area. You are going to assess the space and the tools you use so make a men­tal note of where things are located.

Now think in terms of lev­els or tiers. I’m going to use my own desk as an exam­ple. Fit your work­space into these same steps. My com­puter is my most used item — is in the top tier of my pro­duc­tiv­ity items and it is where I focus first. I include the key­board, mouse, and monitor/​screen (s) in this first tier.

The sec­ond tier of pro­duc­tiv­ity items are my imme­di­ate work items; any­thing that I use reg­u­larly through­out the day. The first item on my list of sec­ond tier items is my cup of tea, of course, but your list should include things like doc­u­ments and resources for the project you are cur­rently work­ing on. If you use pens, or Post-​​it notes, or sta­plers and paper­clips a lot those should be on your sec­ond tier list as well.

All of these sec­ond tier items should lie within arm’s reach. Imag­ine me sit­ting at my desk. When I reach an arm out and turn, mak­ing a cir­cle around my chair, my fin­ger tips mark the max­i­mum dis­tance where any sec­ond tier item should be placed.

Every­thing else in your work setup falls into your third tier, which might or might not be in the same room. Book­shelves and fil­ing cab­i­nets fall into the third tier, unless you access them fre­quently through­out the day.

Now, think about all of the items on your list, even those in the third tier. Every­thing should have its own ded­i­cated place. You should never spend time look­ing for any­thing. You want to know where your most used books are, where your extra paper is stored for the printer, where your tea bags are for your next cuppa.

The Point

The prin­ci­ple behind this assess­ment is to avoid using extra energy or hav­ing to stop and reach for some­thing or hav­ing to scan every­thing in the room because you mis­placed the let­ter opener. There’s ‘no right or wrong to it. Every­one works dif­fer­ently. What’s impor­tant is to be com­fort­able and efficient.

Once you start work­ing your new work­space you should begin to notice that you use less energy reach­ing for things. You’ll use less energy think­ing about what you need and where it’s located. And best of all, you will find your time in your home office to be more pro­duc­tive. Might be you’ll gain enough time to carve out a bit of pre­cious per­sonal time.

What’s in your tier one? Do you have tricks you use to make your work­space effi­cient? We’d love to hear your ideas and other read­ers can use them as well.

Look for more of CaZ else­where on the web at writ​ing​bytes​.com.

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