What’s In A Home Office In 2017?
An increasing number of people are working from home, but home offices are notoriously distracting – unless you engineer them for productivity. There are endless tools, apps, and pieces of technology that can help keep you on task.
If you work from home, consider adopting these 4 strategies to improve your work environment. Suddenly you won’t need to relocate to the coffee shop to get things done.
Switch Positions
You’ll see them in startup offices in cities around the country: standing desks. What’s the appeal? According to many doctors and young professionals, “sitting is the new smoking.” Consider installing a standing desk in your home office so that you can change positions during the course of the day.
Changing how you work can improve your comfort and health while making your home office more appealing. When you hit a productivity wall, just adjust your position – improved ergonomics will change your work life.
Consider A Desk Phone
We really thought they were gone – the landline phone – but maybe we were wrong. Apparently, workers enjoy the stability of a desk phone. There’s a sense that you won’t miss out on calls, they won’t get dropped, and they’re more reliable and official than a cell phone.
At the same time, you don’t want to be exclusively tied to your desk phone, which is why it helps to extend your phone system by adding a mobile option. Dialpad lets you take voice and video calls and send messages no matter where you are. That way, if you have to travel for work, go to a conference, or just leave the office for a day, you can still talk to clients and connect with the main office.
Get Organized
How do you prioritize your work when you have no immediate oversight? It can be hard to determine what’s the most pressing assignment, so choose a to-do app to help you establish a sense of order.
One good web-based app you can use to organize your work assignments at home is NowDoThis. NowDoThis lets you prioritize, tick off tasks, and keeps a visual reminder of what needs to be done on hand. We used to use a pen and paper to check things off, so don’t obsess over finding some complicated app. NowDoThis covers all your bases.
Boost Your Home Security
Most modern offices are deeply concerned with data security and you should be too. You’ll feel better working at home if you look into enhanced options for personal cybersecurity. From virus scanning software to shifting your storage to the cloud, there are lots of affordable ways to protect your data.
If you’re a remote worker for an established company, they may require certain technical security upgrades before allowing you to work from home – ask what their policies are. But even if you run an independent business, you’ll gain more trust from your clients if you lock your system down. Your reputation can take a serious hit if you suffer a security breach.
Working from home is becoming the norm, but it’s only sustainable for those who can approach it with a clear set of priorities, stay on task, and who don’t mind a certain level of isolation. So set up your desk, write down an agenda, and get to work – your home can be the ideal office for any job.
