Home Office Design For Higher Performance Results – A lot of busy, successful and on-the-go people have figured out the benefits of a wisely designed home office. Whether you’re a busy professional or the CEO of Home, a high performance – high pleasure home office makes work feel, flow and function more easily.
By the year 2016, it’s expected that by 64 million people will work from home. That’s a lot of people. Global Workplace Analytics reports an 80% increase in telecommuting between 2005 and 2012. There are a lot more home offices being used, but are they leading to better work-life balance or enhanced satisfaction and productivity at work?
Is there a secret to harnessing our best energy and our best selves to make our work – from home – a high-performance, high pleasure experience and if so, does it stem from something as simple as the design of your home office?
The answer is a likely yes. The problem is that when it comes to home office design, people mistakenly focus purely on work function. How much file space; where does the scanner go; righty or lefty; what are your lighting needs and so forth. All these are important pieces in this puzzle.
But here’s the rub. Unless you are also tightly wrapped around your aesthetic function needs, and everyone has them, you will be in big trouble in your finished office and the dollars you will have mis-spent on its design will be your own. Your aesthetic functional needs are literally your aversions and cravings in an interior environment; how you need a space ordered aesthetically. In other words, what do you absolutely need loaded and layered into an interior in order to feel absolutely great in it?
For some people, the mere placement of pattern on the floor would make them nervous. For others, dark woods will make them feel closed in while still others find rich dark colors deeply satisfying and even comforting. Full folds of fabric at the window soothes one person, while for another that that same idea as nails-on-a-chalkboard bad. We are each programmed with very distinct aversions and cravings on everything from color to light to shape to texture to pattern and so on. Yes, even men.
Be wise in home office design
You want to increase your professional productivity, your work-life balance, your satisfaction while tending to your work as well as your sense of focus, creativity and flow while working? Then be very wise. The human mind is a complicated mechanism. Functional work space needs comes in 2 forms – the gross procedurally driven one, in addition the more ephemeral dynamic of how you feel in an interior due to its make-up and yours. Ignore this – and you will have an expensive mistake on your hands, not to mention a home office you’ll dread walking into and look forward to leaving. Work to strategically make your home office a haven and then you could be part of that soon-to-be 64 million virtual workers, but you’ll be one of the really happy ones.
