To be extremely, and I mean extremely productive, you need something called: hard focus. But how do you reach hard focus? One of the best working tricks is seperating your workspace.
“A place for everything, everything in its place.” Benjamin Franklin
Why do you need to seperate your workspace? The idea behind it is a little Neuro Linguistic trick. If you sit on your couch, you will not get in the mood to study. But if you sit behind your desk, you will feel in the mood for studying. The environment you are in, will determine what you need to do. Besides that aspect, you can arrange everything you need for one job, in that place. Time for some examples. My three different workspaces I have three different ‘workspaces’, I don’t like to call them that way, because they are not all for work.
- My couch. My couch is the place where I can hang out, relax. Over there I eat (I don’t have a table yet), I watch Friends/How I met your mother and I make skype calls. If I think I’ve done enough today, I move myself over there and relax.
- The University Library. This one is a power tool for my study life. If I need to study, I move to the library. That is a place where I can focus really hard on studying and where are always others to ask questions. It is opened till 10pm, so that is a nice time to stop studying! The power of the library? Pretty good explained by this Old Spice-spoof!
- My office-room. I have a bedroom/living room of 9 m2 and I have another room of 5 m2, in the second room there doesn’t fit a bed, so I use that as my ‘office.’ If I am going to work on my blog or other stuff, I will put my laptop there. I have a desk there and a comfortable chair and (another power tool) a second monitor.
How to use seperate workspaces The way I use seperated workspaces is the way I like it, but you are free to experiment in how you use these spaces. Here are some tips.
- Make sure you have fun and work seperated. You can not concentrate in a place where you normally watch Friends.
- Devide your couch! The trick of seperated workspaces can be easy implied in a couch. When you sit at the left side, you relax, when you sit at the right side, you work. So, if you are working and a friend calls, you just hop on to the other side of the couch and you can have the conversation!
- Stick to these areas. You need to make your brain comfortable with the space you’ve chosen. This could take up a week or two, but after these weeks, you will get extremely productive!
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Twitter: NielsGouman
October 11, 2009 at 11:02 pm
while I do believe you’ve got a point, I have to say this is one of the hardest things to actually implement (or maybe that’s just me)
i advise using duct tape to physically separate a room. Much easier to implement it that way (in response to Niels).
@Niels
Yeah it is really hard to implement. And it takes a while before you see any results.
But the results you get, are probably worth the hard work
@Logan
Duct tape? Just put it on the ground so you have ‘seperated rooms’? Sounds like a good idea. And you have something to talk about when friends are coming over
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