Unless you win the lottery, you will spend a total of 12 years at work in your lifetime – according to a Daily Mail study conducted earlier this year – not to mention the time you spend getting to work and checking your emails while at home.
With this in mind, it makes sense to make your workplace as comfortable as possible whether this means physically making your life easier or just brightening things up with some home comforts. To give you some inspiration, here are some workplace hacks that will shake up your nine-to-five so that those 12 years go by just a little bit quicker.
Buy a plant
Let’s start small, a plant might only cost you in the region of a fiver, but the benefits are enormous! You want something that doesn’t take up too much space or requires too much watering, and then plonk it on your desk in a nice pot. Believe it or not, nature just makes us happier, even if you’re not an outdoorsy person. In fact, Japan have taken this idea so far that they now offer employees forest bathing; quite simply a trip into a forest without your technology to heal the soul.
Get comfortable
No doubt when you started at your job, you had the usual check over to make sure your desk was at the right height but are you really that comfortable? There are lots of accessories you can invest in to ease the aches and pains. You might need a wrist rest, or more back support, a fan or more warmth and all of these things are available online. Consider work accessories as an investment because you can always take it to your next position, use them to work from home or re-sell them.
Make life a little easier
Do you have heavy things to move around at work? No doubt you’re verging on having a bad back then if the right procedures aren’t in place. Make life easy and have your workplace sort you out with a trolley that’s fixed with high-quality Tente castor wheels, so you can easily manoeuvre items around, with no more injury risking, weight lifting tasks.
Take a walk
Get away from your desk regularly to break up the monotony of looking at a screen for too long – and to care for your eyes too. Whether it’s just a trip to top up your water bottle or a stroll round the block at lunchtime, squeezing in a quick walk is truly beneficial to your happiness in the workplace.
Speed things up
A great creation from Moleskin is their Smart Note Pad and Smart Pen, a writing set created for iPhones, Android phones and tablets. When you go into meetings or have your own little brainstorm, you can use your Smart Note Pad and pen and the doodles and notes will be sent directly to your mobile device once you’re finished. This can saves masses of time when it comes to writing up notes from meetings or getting ideas across.
Other than these simple physical solutions to make you more comfortable at work, keep in mind that if you aren’t happy with your job then no amount of pretty flowers and cushions is going to change that. It might be time to be proactive about your situation and search for a new job – or speak to your manager about your feelings and how they could possibly help improve things for you.