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Women who work from home can boost their productivity by setting up a comfortable and efficient workspace at home.
By Prerna Malik
For most career women, the office and home tend to overlap. Whether you’re a high-powered executive who brings home projects from work or a working mother with a home-based business, chances are you have a niche that you use to work in.
A home office can be a dedicated room with a door that shuts out the television and the household sounds or it could be an area in your dining room. Regardless of how big or small your home office is, here are ways to organize and improve it to boost your own productivity and efficiency:
Organizing is a working woman’s best friend
You can increase your productivity at work instantly by keeping your home office organized and clutter-free. Have a system that helps you to deal with paperwork and project work. Whether it is a workflow system or a simple “File, Trash, Act” system, make sure you don’t let paper clutter pile up and files get disorganized.
Sangeeta S Bahl, Founder and Director of Impact Image Consultants and a working mother is a firm believer in dealing with mail as it comes in. She says, “Handle mail within 24 hours and you’ll never have paper clutter to deal with.”
Organizing is also key when it comes to your desk. Since I have a small working area (read, my dining table), I have to make sure that everything on it helps me to work quickly and easily. So, I have a small basket with stationery supplies, a tray for files and paperwork, and a shelf for books.
You can increase your productivity instantly by keeping your home office organized and clutter-free.
A place for everything
Your home office can quickly sap your productivity if every single moment is spent hunting for something or the other. Not only that, it can really impact a working woman’s mood and make her very irritable indeed. That is why, you need to make sure you have a place for everything and everything in its place.
A few ideas to help you improve space management in a home office are:
– Shelves: Invest in a few smart bookshelves that can go up on the wall or stand in the corner so that you can stash your reading material, boxes of stationery and other important things easily and quickly.
– Boxes: To hold papers, stationery supplies and miscellaneous items. These can be both artistic and functional. You can get several affordable and attractive options from most office supply stores.
– Filing Cabinet: If your business involves a lot of paperwork, it would be a good idea to invest in a filing cabinet so that you can keep all important papers organized and safe. Bahl went a step further and got herself some beautiful foldable file folders that not only organize her filing but also look aesthetic.
– Labels: To help you remember where everything is and where everything goes. I use premade ones but you can easily use a marker and label things by hand.
Sit right; work better
The right kind of furniture can make a HUGE difference to the way a working mother works and feels. Investing in a good, ergonomically designed chair and desk can not only boost productivity but also make staying pain-free possible for women at work while at home. In Bahl’s office, the furniture also includes a sofa along with the desk. She recommends investing in office furniture that is workable to make your work time easier and more efficient.
Aesthetics and technology do matter
At the end of the day, a busy career woman should enjoy working in her home office. So, make sure it looks pretty and appealing to the eye. A vase of flowers, a few photos of fun holidays or some great artwork on the wall can really help keep you inspired and motivated as you meet clients or deal with deadlines. Manika Awasthi, a working HR professional and busy mom, has books, pictures and photos to brighten up her home office and keep her inspired and energized.
At the end of the day, a busy career woman should enjoy working in her home office.
Awasthi, also, strongly recommends investing in technology. A reliable, high-speed Internet connection, a laptop with the right configuration for your work and a smart phone, she feels, are the best ways to make your home office a productive space.
Regardless of the space you have for an office, a few simple improvements to your workspace at home can make it the best, most productive place for YOU – the multi-tasking, ever-on-the go career woman.
*Photo credit: nkeppol
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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