I have seen a few people share that they have a positive experience working from home.

The routine early morning wakeups and elongated traffic hours are a thing of the past. You can even afford to wear anything all day, except you have a video meeting to attend. Isn’t that wonderful? Finally, you are calling the shots.

People now say they spend more time with their family, and this has also positively impacted their work. Good stuff.

On the flip side, people now need to do more self-management, since their bosses/managers aren’t physically present to provide such support. Others have reported high-level distractions. Imagine working on a proposal in the living room with your TV in front of you and your favourite TV show showing? These are the realities of working from home for some people.

In this article, we have put together two fundamental elements you should consider when setting up your workspace to ensure you stay focused and productive as you work from home. These are separation and isolation.

Separation

Set up a space that is only used for work. And another for other activities like relaxation.

As we continue to work from home, some of us have different spaces we work from. You can decide to work from your room, the dining area, or even close to your closet. The emphasis on separation is ensuring that whatever space/location you decide to work from must be dedicated to working. i.e., it should only have elements that put you in that environment that allow you to stay focused and productive.

Depending on the nature of your work, you should set up your dedicated workspace without distractions.

So, what if you cannot afford a dedicated space? Not to worry, you are covered. The idea is to create a separation (not necessary a space dedicated for work). For example, you may decide to use your dining table for work. However, when it is time to use the space, you need to take out items that may impede or distract your work and also adjust the dining set to match your desired workspace. By doing this, you have created a separation for the period of work, rather than just jumping on the dining to start working. When done, you can readjust your dining for eating.

Isolation

One of the biggest challenges with working from home is the amount of distraction we battle with. Loud music playing from your neighbours, family needing your attention etc.

This is the reason why ensuring your workspace is isolated (when required) is important.

Little things like selecting a location that has a door which separates you from other parts of the house. You may also get noise cancellation headphones. When in use, it keeps noise from your surrounding environment away.

The idea of considering these two important elements (separation and isolation) when setting up your home workspace is to ensure we do not use a significant part of our brainpower battling to navigate through the many distractions that can come from working from home.