Creating Your Ideal Workspace by Nisa Chitakasem

Creating Your Ideal Workspace When  we  work  in  a  fantastic  physical  environment  we  understand  clearly  just  how  important it is to us. It has an impact not just on our working life, but in other aspects of our  life as well.   Great physical environments provide us with the essentials for a healthy working life. These  elements can include the right temperature to work at, excellent lighting (a combination of  natural light with artificially produced light), good and healthy food and drink, ergonomically  sensitive working spaces and comfortable desks and chairs to work at.  In This Worksheet…  We  encourage  you  to  think  harder  about  your  physical  environment  and  to  change  it  if  necessary. By completing this worksheet, you will have a clearer idea of the type of physical  environment you should seek in your next stage of your career; whether you stay where you  are or move organisation. We spend such a lot of time at work. We also spend a lot of our  life at home. Just think about how much time, effort, love and attention goes into making  our home just as we wish it to be. Why is that? It is where we want to live and how we want  to live to the best that we can be.  Do  we  think  like  that  when  we  are  at  work  ‐  even  when  we  spend  such  an  enormous  amount of time? Perhaps we do not feel we have enough power and influence to affect our  workplace as we do our home. Perhaps we abdicate that to other people and do not believe  in it. We do not feel that we have any right to make an input to all physical environments at  work.  Follow this four-step process…   To explore, understand and ensure that your physical environment has a positive impact on  you at work. Until we consider just how important the physical environment is, we do not  always understand the impact (often the negative impact) that it is having upon us.   The 4 steps in this worksheet are:  1) Describing your optimum physical environment through each of your senses 2) Exploring what would your physical environment look like 3) Identifying how to improve your physical environment 4) Understanding why your physical environment is important to you www.careerignitionclub.com www.positionignition.com Position Ignition Ltd  All Rights Reserved

Step one: Describe your optimum physical environment through each of your 5 senses Write down what you feel when you come into your workplace (this can be walking into the  building and/or walking to your workstation/office), followed by what you see, think, smell  and then taste.

1. What do you FEEL when you come into your workplace?

2. What do you SEE when you come into your workplace?

3. What do you THINK when you come into your workplace?

4. What do you SMELL when you come into your workplace?

5. What do you TASTE when you come into your workplace?

Step two: If you were to wave a magic wand, what would your physical environment look like? Write  down  what  you  would  like  it  to  look  like,  feel  like,  smell  like  and  taste  like  to  you.  Based  on  your  responses  to  step  one,  you  can  start  imagining  how  an  ideal  physical  environment for you might look

1. What do you want your workplace to LOOK like?

2. What do you want your workplace to FEEL like?

3. What do you want your workplace to SMELL like?

4. What do you want your workplace to TASTE like?

1. What do you want your workplace to LOOK like?

2. What do you want your workplace to FEEL like?

3. What do you want your workplace to SMELL like?

4. What do you want your workplace to TASTE like?

Some of your thoughts may be unrealistic (perhaps too creative!). Some of them are ideas  that  you  could  put  into  practice  ‐  either  immediately  or  in  consultation  with  your  work  colleagues. You can move furniture, things in your workspace, hang a picture or poster on  the wall or change your wallpaper on your computer….    Step three: What one thing could you do now to improve your physical environment? It  might  be  something  very  close  to  our  physical  working  environment‐like  putting  fresh  flowers on our desk. It could be that we start using the fridge in the kitchen to bring better,  fresher and healthier food for lunch.   Whilst these are a couple of guiding ideas, what could you do? Write your ideas in the space  below…

Step four: Why is the physical environment so important to us? Think  of  five  reasons  why  your  physical  environment  is  important  to  you.  When  you  have  written each reason, write next to it the benefit that it can bring you:

1) ………………………………………………………………..

2) ………………………………………………………………..

3) ………………………………………………………………..

4) ………………………………………………………………..

5) ………………………………………………………………..