19 Dec How having a desk has improved my productivity

Having worked from home for four years, I have jumped between a mixture of laptops and “desks”. When I say “desks”, I mean that I have never actually had an official desk until a month ago. My desk was any suitable work space I could find!

We recently decorated our lounge, moving most of the existing furniture out or repositioning it to make the room more suitable for us as a family of four. We also realised that there was a nook that had been filled with racks for CDs and DVDs that we hardly ever used. So we took them down. In the absence of a spare bedroom or office, the desk nook had been created.

I found a ladder desk online for £50. It took no time at all to assemble and was really solid for the price. Take a look …

https://www.therange.co.uk/furniture/storage-and-tables/desks/ladder-desk

Two screws to attach it to the wall and I was away, well once I had installed a larger screened computer, mouse and keyboard I was.

The improvement in my productivity and work speed was noticeable almost immediately; even more so once I had a chair I could feel comfortable sitting on and I’d become more used to the new computer.

A larger screen enabled me to have two items/programmes running concurrently, allowing me to jump from one to the other seamlessly; a task that would have been rather fiddly on a 13inch laptop screen.

I now have an ‘official’ space purely for work and an occasional spot of online shopping. It allows me to switch off from everything else that may be occurring in the background and it gives me a place to store all of the “stuff” that goes with my job. There’s no staring into the garden looking for inspiration, or getting way-layed thinking about what’s for dinner, which is what sitting at the dining table doing my work caused. This nook is perfectly suited to me, but I wasn’t expecting it to have such a drastic effect on my work too as it was created just to be a dedicated work space.

When at my desk, I only think about work, allowing me to stay focused on the job in hand and in turn, complete it quicker. I can work through my tasks and navigate between them in a much easier way.

It’s the best and most productive £50 we have ever spent!

Have you had a similar experience? Where do you base yourself while working from home?