100-ish tips for working from home – Part 3
Part 3. Work setup and environment
- A good quality plug-in speaker may improve your ability to hear and be heard on Zoom which helps your posture!
- Reduce stress about your dodgy connection by using an ethernet cable instead of a wifi connection
- When you’re sitting at your desk, your head should be balancing on top of your spine not hanging in front of it (risking tension headache)
- Reduce eye strain by ensuring you are looking across at your screen
- To keep your legs feeling comfortable, make sure your feet are flat on the floor or a small platform – if you can’t reach the floor or your knees are higher than your hips, the chair is too low
- If you have back pain, stand up regularly (every 30mins or so) to move around
- Minimise the risk of headache by keeping your jaw bone parallel with the floor, not pointing your chin at it!
- Take deep breaths every so often to improve fluid return all the way from your feet if you are in a long meeting and can’t stand up regularly
- Fresh air is psychologically important – open the windows to ventilate your home office regularly
- Try to get as much natural daylight as possible – open curtains and blinds with the sunrise!
- If your home office doesn’t get much natural light consider buying a daylight lamp to help hormone regulation
- Bad or strong smells can be distracting and annoying. Keep your home office smelling fresh with reed sticks
- If you’re in a basement office, use a dehumidifier to keep the temperature / humidity pleasant
- An air purifier to cleanse the air might help your respiratory health if you live near busy roads
- Houseplants can improve air quality – a NASA study recommended peace lilies, ivy and spider plants as top CO2 absorbers and O2 releasers
- For further improvement in air quality, Ikea’s Gunrid curtain breaks down pollutants such as cleaning chemicals and pet odours when activated by light
- Reduce distractions by separating your work and living area with a moveable screen
- Tidy room, tidy mind! If you’re working in a household room (ie at the kitchen table) keep the room tidy – clear away washing up, children’s toys etc.
- At the end of the day, tidy your work area away at close of business and don’t go back until tomorrow!
