Improve Your Workspace With Minor Changes

from Tree­hug­ger

We want to have as great and as com­fort­able a work­space then so we can make the most out of it.

Greatly Improve Your Phys­i­cal Work­space with Small Changes from Life­hacker

Many of us spend quite a lot of time in our work­places yet spend pre­cious lit­tle time think­ing about how that work­space is laid out. It’s time to assess the state of your work­place and improve it.

Why take the time to assess the cur­rent state of affairs? Because if you don’t you’ll end up like an old coworker of mine. I ques­tioned once, why his desk was arranged in such a pecu­liar fash­ion. He paused, shrugged and said “That’s how it was when this office became mine.” The office had become his some ten years ear­lier, so for a decade he had sim­ply left the desk at an odd angle and poorly arranged for the room.

Don’t sim­ply accept that the poor arrange­ment of your work space is fate. Whether you’re stuck work­ing in the con­straints of a cor­po­rate cubi­cle or you’ve got carte blanche to do as you wish with your home office, make the most of the space you have.

Before all else, assess your ergonomic sit­u­a­tion. How do you feel, phys­i­cally, after work­ing in your work­space all day? Are your shoul­ders sore? Do your wrists ache? Although tweak­ing your work­space for ergonomic issues isn’t glam­orous it will save you from the rav­ages of repet­i­tive stress injuries. We’ve shared sev­eral resources over the years to help you plan an ergonomic work­space like a work­sta­tion designer, and a guide to set­ting up a healthy and usable workspace.

Make sure to care­fully con­sider each com­po­nent of your setup. As a per­sonal exam­ple, no mat­ter what I did I couldn’t find a com­fort­able posi­tion for my mouse. I tried adjust­ing my arm rest, chang­ing mice, chang­ing the posi­tion of the chair, and so on. Finally while read­ing a web site about RSI injuries and the impor­tance of keep­ing the angle of your arms neu­tral I real­ized that my enor­mous key­board was the prob­lem. I couldn’t put my arm in a neu­tral posi­tion with the numer­i­cal key­pad push­ing the mouse so far to the right. I switched to a key­board, a Microsoft Sidewinder, where I could swap the key­pad to the left hand side of the key­board and I’ve been happy and ache free ever since. Give your own work­space that kind of detailed look over and you’ll be able to ban­ish your aches and pains too.

Before we leave the topic of ergonom­ics and periph­er­als, if you’re inter­ested in replac­ing your key­board or mouse with a more com­fort­able model we’d urge you to check out two pre­vi­ous fea­tures at Life­hacker: The Best Mouse You’ve Ever Had and The Best Key­board You’ve Ever Had. Both are com­pi­la­tions of the mice and key­boards Life­hacker read­ers love. Photo by blupics.

Once you’ve assessed the ergonomic sit­u­a­tion and deter­mined that your work­sta­tion isn’t going to give you carpal tun­nel or sco­l­io­sis you can begin con­sid­er­ing other aspects of the space. How is the light­ing? Is there a sig­nif­i­cant amount of glare on the mon­i­tor? Is it pos­si­ble to turn off or dif­fuse the source of the glare? Although it might look silly, if putting a sim­ple mon­i­tor hood elim­i­nates glare from over­head lights you can’t turn off it’s well worth it. You may want to con­sider inex­pen­sive sources of alter­nate light such as using cheap rope lights as ambi­ent light­ing or a sim­ple CFL bulb behind your mon­i­tor as bias lighting.

Tak­ing care of plants may not be high on your daily list of pri­or­i­ties, but hav­ing them in your work­space pro­vides fresh air and a mood boost. We’ve gath­ered up some guides to five hard-to-kill house­plants for your home or work­space as well as three great plants for clean­ing the air in your office. Don’t under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of qual­ity air. I’ve worked in offices so tiny and with such poor air cir­cu­la­tion that clos­ing the door would cause the peo­ple inside to slowly fall asleep like deep space voy­agers on a mis­sion gone wrong.