How to set up your home office

In these days of confinement in which we are forced to stay at home, many have had to opt for teleworking, but they doubt how it will be the best way to integrate their work at home. That is why we are going to give you some advice on how to set up your home office

Working from home has many advantages and also disadvantages. In the advantages we have the saving of time to travel to our workplace, greater autonomy and flexibility, less pressure in many cases… but not everything is as beautiful as one might imagine.

Working from home means more distractions, less discipline and even more hours working, since you don't have anywhere to disconnect. By this we mean that when you work in an office you go home and disconnect, but in the case of working from home this disconnection is much more complicated and can mean that in the end we work more hours than when we were not teleworking.

That is why it is very necessary to have a good work environment, prepared for it and that it becomes your office, independent from the rest of the house.

Suitable environment

The most comfortable thing is that one of the rooms of the house becomes our office, to have a place that is not frequented for the rest of the family and thus be able to concentrate. For example, the living room is not a good idea, since it is the social center of any house and the place where all the members of the room pass through.

We must find ourselves in a friendly environment that allows us to concentrate at the same time, so it is convenient to have some shelves or a closet nearby where we can store and have at hand what we need to work.

We can decorate the room a bit to give it a more personal touch, but without going overboard it will not be counterproductive for our concentration.

The table and the chair

The table is something primary to carry out our work. We are not going to go into designs, since that is something personal for each one, but it must make us feel comfortable and with good ergonomics so that our position is as correct as possible.

The fact of having drawers or not, the size, shape and other components, is a personal choice of each one and will depend both on the space and on our particular needs, but taking into account that it will be necessary have on hand everything we need to work.

The chair is another essential element when setting up our home office. We must have a chair that is designed so that our backs do not suffer when spending several hours sitting down.

It should be a chair that can adjust to the height of the table in order to have the ideal position to spend several hours in front of the computer. It must have a good backrest and armrests, to contribute to the good rest of the back, the lower back, the shoulders and the arms themselves.

The material of the chair is also essential so that it can breathe well while we sit. The padding should make us feel comfortable when sitting, although there will be those who want a chair that is rather hard or more soft, that depends on the taste of each person.

Table and chair options

Now we are going to leave you a few options that you can consider for your table and chairs, depending on the style you want to have. If you want chairs with a more classic style, but comfortable and ergonomic at the same time, we leave you three options:

If what best suits you, are the gaming style chairs we are also going to leave you three that could fit:

Buy: EUGAD Racing (Amazon)

Buy: GTPLAYER Gaming Chair (Amazon)

Buy: Drift DR150BR (Amazon)

As for the tables we also want to leave you some so you can acquire:

Buy: Habitdesign 0F4655A (Amazon)

Buy: COMIFORT Desktop (Amazon)

Buy: HOMCOM Corner Table (Amazon)

Light is paramount

Having good lighting is something primary for our eyesight.

During the day it is always good to use all the natural light we can, since even psychologically that type of light helps to have more optimism and production will be higher.

In any case, it is always convenient to have good artificial lighting and it is highly recommended to have a lamp on the table to apply the light to a certain area where we need maximum lighting, either for a text that we must read or for the computer keyboard itself. This will be very good for our eyesight in the medium and long term.

Light Options

As we tell you light is important and to make your life a bit easier, we leave you three examples of desk lamp that could be very good options.

Components

There are devices that will be essential for working from home.

The computer cannot be missing and this is where we have two options.

1. Desktop computer: If we are sure of continuing to work from home when this coronavirus crisis is over, we can choose to set up a computer desktop, since they are more affordable than laptops and easier to expand, should we run out of features.
2. Laptop: if, on the contrary, everything that happens with the coronavirus is the cause of being at home working and when everything is resolve, we will return to our usual work station, it is best to have a laptop, since its manageability will be final by the time we return to our office.

Another element that becomes essential is the internet connection. Keep in mind that you are going to do everything via the network, so its speed and capacity will be totally essential.

If we need to send more or less heavy documents, almost any connection that is set up today works for us, but when those documents go to amounts of gigabytes, a fiber optic connection would be ideal.

It is also important in most jobs, to have a printer of more or less quality, depending on whether our prints are going to Be drafty or more professional.

Finally, we must have with us a “double-edged sword” such as the smartphone Today it is a fundamental tool for communication between people and between co-workers, but we also know that it can be a dangerous distraction, so we need to make sure we use it the right way.

Component Options

Whether you are looking for a desktop computer or a laptop, we are going to leave several options that may be interesting for you to take into account.

Both mouses and keyboards are also important and that is why we are going to see several examples.

And finally, a monitor is extremely important, since it is a direct transmission of what the computer is doing with us.

Organization and concentration, a fundamental part

Everything we have told you would not make productive sense if we do not do our part in the section on organization and concentration.

Knowing that you are working, even if you are at home, making sure of it and complying in the same way as if you had your boss 10 meters away in his office, are essential parts to perform.

You must organize yourself in your tasks, not fall into self-deception to leave things for later and, above all, even if the rest of the room is your home, the place where you are right now is not and you must behave as you did in the office.

Obviously you will be able to get up, in the same way that you can do it in the office and you will be able to have the same breaks that you had in it, but nothing more, because the moment we open the "close season", the consequences can be disastrous.

And we must take care of the use of mobile phones, since it can be an important distraction and when we realize it, minutes will have passed that would have been crucial for us to finish a task or leave it almost finished. The smartphone is good to have, to look at it, but without abusing it and knowing that we are at our workplace.

This is all you need to set up your home office and not have any problem teleworking. What we have humbly told you is what those of us who have been working from home for some time do, to try to help you make the transition as bearable and productive as possible.