Decorate the Home office corner

This goes without saying that if you have some items that help you think, inspire you, motivate you, you should keep it on your desk. That is why people have photos of their kids, a stress ball, a funky appointment calendar at their office desk.

But what if those are all available because you are working from home? How do you decorate your office at home? After having your children running around you, while you try to work; their picture may not be the best motivator when you are trying to focus your mind away from them.

Even then, there are some things you can do to decorate your office corner. You can get a bright coloured tabletop for example, or just a funky postcard to cheer your mind. How about making a mood board out of cork or metal? Or just hang a pretty To do list? Maybe hang a small plant beside you. Plants are always good for the eye and mood. Pinterest is full of some beautiful home office ideas. You can just use what you have, to create what you want. How about you read this post of mine on how I have organised and decorated my home office space.

Working hours

This is a challenging topic. It is not easy to have a disciplined working hour in so many fields of work, specially so for those who are self-employed. However, having a defined working hour is necessary to set boundaries between your working and not working hour. Small business owners, bloggers cannot often implement it, especially in this age of instant response and gratification. This always results in unnecessary stress. We need to decide for ourselves, when we should decide to stop responding to every single work-related query.

I am also guilty of this mistake myself, more often than not. There have been times, when it was way past the scheduled time and yet I flicked open the office mobile phone to check the latest information. I am trying to get better in setting the working hour boundaries. Here is what I do that helps me a lot.

• Only check work related email during working hours ( set by my organisation or me).
• If it is something additional like writing etc, I only check messages few times a week and not more.
• I avoid my business laptop and mobile phone during off hours. For private activities, where I need to access my business device, I have trained myself not to look into office mails or programs or tasks. It takes some effort, but it results in better work-life structure.
• Take scheduled breaks. Treat lunch hours, dinners, breakfasts as you would treat if you were working outside. That is your time, to enjoy your food. Remember, all this work and struggle, it is for food and health first. So, give your mealtimes the respect they deserve.

Image courtesy : Christian . This was drawn exclusively by him for using in the blog and is part of the copyright of the blog. Do not publish without permission.