Thursday, February 3, 2011

Office Environment

Reading Seth Godin's blog (always an interesting take on business), today he talks about the importance of environment - of an inspiring space for creative meetings or your work.  Good point.

Take a look around your work area...

Comfortable?  Convenient?  Efficient?  What do you, personally, need?  Think through practical requirements: chair, work surface, lighting, tools, equipment, lay-out space, storage/filing, extra seating...  Are there meetings or public interactions here?  Does your area present your public business "face"?  Or is it purely private?

Your environment should help you do your best work by providing pragmatic and mental/emotional support.  What distracts you or helps you concentrate?  Beyond efficient and pleasant, make your workplace quiet or stimulating or... inspiring.

Corporate businesses will dictate a style (that lamp like a lady's leg in a fish-net stocking is OUT) and someone has to sit in the cubby under the stairs (H. Potter CPA), but there is always some improvement or claim-marker you can place.  At least you can have the classiest coffee mug at IBM and a great frame for your permitted 3x5-photo-of-appropriate-spouse.  Sometimes you can change more than you expect.  Most folks waste this opportunity on knic-knacs.  Get daring: hang real art, grow a real plant of some size and majesty, paint that wall!

But a home office can be as individual and satisfying as you choose to make it.  Even if it's the laundry room.  Why not?  Design a great office to share with Mr and Mrs Whirlpool from Facilities.  Not quiet cubical mates exactly, but they never steal pens.  The most inspiring "home office" I know was sculptor Alexander Calder's studio: in a rustic barn, he had dozens of mobiles flying overhead like birds and outside his windows was a field where, among his bronzes, sheep grazed.

(My own studio is an enclosed back porch: brick, wood siding, art junk, lots of books, and lots and lots of glass with a view of squirrels.  No bronzes... but I gotta Styrofoam TM carving of a sea god from an old show, does that count?)

No comments:

Post a Comment