Space optimization. Physical spaces.
Spaces mean any environment or zone where a scenario of movement or activity is carried out. I divide spaces into physical and digital. Physical spaces include home and work locations, as well as areas within them. Routes or temporary locations can also be included in this category. Digital spaces include gadgets, services, websites, applications, etc. We constantly interact with spaces, and it is desirable to do it optimally. What’s the use of a well-established management system and time management if you lose your keys every time or try to remember for an hour where the scanned document is on the computer.
The space should help minimize unnecessary steps and ease of focusing. Often, despite the imperfection of the place and the inefficiency of actions, we habitually take extra steps. Because they are very small and seem insignificant, not the kind to change anything — like in the parable about the dog on the nail. With such small extra steps, you can waste about an hour per day. Although it could be spent on learning a new skill or hobby. The main source of unnecessary steps is clutter. In this place, everyone immediately opens the chakra of creativity, and a discussion about “this is a creative mess” or “I’m so used to it, and it’s convenient for me” begins. Such arguments have a right to exist, but depend on the purpose of activity in space. Protecting a cluttered apartment for recreation and chaos in the workplace for creativity are two different things.
Psychologists from the University of Minnesota believe that order makes us more cautious, and disorder pushes us to more creative solutions. Disorder can cause stress, depression, and has a bad effect on brain function and mood. Accordingly, it depletes our cognitive resources and negatively affects productivity. There are many studies that prove this. Outside of creativity, science is against disorder. In red_mad_robot, they often say: “Order on the table, order in the head.” I totally agree with that. I will not teach you to put things in order. For this, there are cleaning services and the bestseller “Magic Cleaning” by Marie Kondo. I want to share the basic techniques that I use to optimize spaces. They are indeed basic, but if you want to delve into the topic, you will definitely find something that will surprise you.
Physical spaces
After working in a car service room, in a factory, warehouse, office and coworking, I identified the main places to optimize the workspace.
1. Window seat. Sunlight is more useful than artificial lighting, and the eyes get tired less. There is always something to look away for rest when working at the monitor, and there is a feeling of a change of day.
2. Comfortable desk and chair. Choosing work furniture for yourself is a whole science. I advise you to spend time studying the issue. Working while sitting is harmful in general, so the negative effect should be minimized. The correct selection of furniture will improve performance and preserve health. It’s especially relevant for those who work from home.
3. Desk surface. When we moved to the new office, our things were neatly and beautifully laid out on the tables. At work, I felt like an octopus that throws tentacles all over the table. Do not do this, take into account the movements of the hands. Sit down and simulate the work. Move your hands to understand the optimal location of objects. Leave the things you need most often available and group the items by zones.
4. Documents storage. It is better to stock up on folders right away and organize a storage system from the very beginning. There will definitely come a time when you have to look for documents. Store them correctly or dispose of them, and it is better to use electronic document management.
5. Stickers and boards. It is useful to have a board near the workplace where you can draw, add stickers and magnets. You can fix goals in front of your eyes or use Kanban on a project. Visualization helps a lot. I even hung a board at home.
6. No wires. There are many devices to get rid of them. Usually, the right furniture helps to solve the problem.
7. Good lighting. Poor artificial light harms our eye sight, affects fatigue, distorts the perception of colors, and the list can go on forever. Color temperature, color rendering index, location and quality of lamps — all this affects the quality of light. Few people bother with indoor lighting, although the issue is very important and complex. Try to have direct and diffusing light in the rooms. It should not be dim or dazzling. For documents, use adjustable table lamps so that they illuminate the necessary objects and do not give shade.
8. Noise canceling headphones. It is not necessary to use expensive models, there is a large selection on the market. The main thing is the ability not to hear the environment when you need to concentrate. I advise you to buy big ones so that your colleagues can see them from afar.
9. Notepad, pens and markers. Don’t be the kind of person who runs around like a cat seeing snow for the first time, looking for a pen to write down when talking on the phone. Always keep a notebook nearby.
10. Atmosphere. Train yourself not to clutter up the workplace. If the place allows, then put plants and favorite items to make the workplace pleasant and create a cozy atmosphere. Just take care not to turn the table into a refrigerator with magnets.
If you are limited to a workplace in the office, then everything is much more complicated at home. To optimize your home space, the Internet is full of life hacks. We will not discuss them, so as not to turn this section into a video by 5 Min Crafts. You will figure out how to implement optimization solutions yourself, and I will tell you about the main approaches to optimization. What should you pay attention to so that your cognitive resources at home are like at a resort. I identify three pillars of optimization in everyday life: the UX approach, order and storage, and the absence of clutter.
1. The UХ-approach.
The picture above shows a beautiful sidewalk made of tiles, but people trample their own paths. They do not appreciate beauty, but do what is convenient for them. You can understand them, they are engaged in time optimization, shortening the path. Optimization in the household space should be done on the same principle. UX stands for a user experience. When the UX approach is used, the analysis of user preferences for which products and services are created is of the most importance. In the case of the “working triangle” in the kitchen, this is the right UX approach.
You are the user, the home space and the zones inside are the products for you. Often, restrictions in the form of space or repairs interfere with optimizing the space, but people have learned to mask it perfectly. From the repair stage, we deceive ourselves with beautiful renderings of interiors. Spacious kitchens with clean and half-empty cabinets are pleasing to the eye, but in real life you know perfectly well what is going to happen. The countertop is crammed with objects that you periodically try to put in place. After the renovation, we arrange hypocrisy balls and put things in order in front of the guests, although before them the clothes were piling up comfortably on a chair or sofa.
“If you want to put the house in order, invite guests”
Polina Masalygina
Our brain is lazy and optimizes everything by itself. Only his ways lead to disorder. Order partly solves this problem, but it is necessary to optimize the process of restoring order and reduce its frequency. Imagine your apartment as an interface with which you interact. You get nervous when you can’t figure out how to pay for mobile communication in the bank’s application. Thousands of people in large business centers study customer user experience, test interfaces and improve them to provide the best service. Of course, they want to benefit in the form of money. Do the same with any physical space, take into account your user experience and benefit in the form of time saved.
If you are planning a renovation, then look for designers who think about how you will live in an apartment, and not just draw beautiful pictures. They are not users of your space, but their experience will be useful. Take an apartment plan or visit it yourself. Play Sims with yourself in the lead role. Imagine how you move around, where you store things, what items you use and which outlets you plug into. When I ordered the dressing room, I received several drawings from different companies. They were formulaic, and it immediately became clear that they could not be used. We examined our wardrobe, measured clothes, shoes, and wrote out items for storage.
Then we stood for an hour in an empty dressing room, imitating how we come from the street, undress and place clothes. As a result, we calculated the dimensions, the required number of shelves, hangers and drawers. We took into account the length of our hands and the frequency of using things to place things on the shelves. Product designers would say that we built our CJM (Customer journey map) in the dressing room. CJM is a client’s travel map that shows the interactions of the client and the company from the client’s point of view.
The same was done with each room and area. For example, we bought a free-standing beautiful trash can with a lid to avoid the step of opening the door under the sink. We hung lamps with a motion sensor in the bathroom and kitchen so as not to blind ourselves at night and not to take extra steps to the switch. Always think in scenarios and be a user of your space, which solves your problems and provides first-class service. If an object often and randomly lies in an inconvenient place, then there is no need to look for the culprits. Analyze the scenario in which it got to this place, and rearrange the space so that it gets to the right place, or the current place becomes convenient in the scenario. This is not even a freak approach, but common sense. Look at your space through the UX approach and write down what improvements can be made. Do not do unnecessary actions, there is no time for them, and they are unpleasant.
2. Order and storage.
I have had a good relationship with the order since childhood. I always strive to organize and group everything. Every day I see the value of it. I rarely have to look for anything. If I know that I didn’t throw the thing away, but I don’t remember exactly where it is, then I know where I could put it. I use all the life hacks to provide the perfect UX approach. From plastic dividers in cabinets to folders. I use everything that helps to divide into zones and group objects to find them immediately. Using the principles of proximity and similarity, visual communication with space becomes easier.
Pay special attention to the storage of documents. Firstly, it is very unpleasant to lose and restore them. Secondly, this is one of the most popular places where you can get lost in search of the right piece of paper. Analyze what you are looking for most often and what is difficult to access. Solve the problem fundamentally so that you never return to the useless search process. Order is not beautifully folded things, but an interface through which you interact with space. The interaction should be natural and simple so that order is easily maintained. Think through all the scenarios and on the Internet you will find a lot of solutions for organizing order and storage. I also sincerely wish you to be able to delegate the restoration of order.
3. No clutter.
It has been proven that some people experience pain when they throw things away. But there are also people who enjoy it. Which camp do you belong to? If it is difficult for you to throw things away, then study this topic. It’s very interesting. There are different techniques for painlessly convincing yourself that throwing things away is a cool solution. I don’t like to throw things away myself, especially if we’re talking about clothes. Not because I’m in pain, but because I don’t like the process of buying new clothes.
As long as my wife doesn’t threaten me that she will leave me because of my appearance, then I can walk wearing the same clothes for years. Because I’m very handsome in everything, and I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. She, like the Italians on New Year’s Eve, periodically gets rid of things. Since for the appearance of something new in life, you need to throw out the old. Yes, and let’s agree, until you throw it away, you will not buy a new one. It is more correct not to get rid of junk periodically, but to avoid getting it to you and piling up.
Read about conscious consumption and watch the movie “100 Dinge”. Not the best comedy, but it’s totally watchable and makes you think. There, two friends give up all their property on a bet and lock it in a warehouse for 100 days. According to the rules of the bet, you can use one thing from the warehouse every day. In the context of this section, the absence of clutter helps to restore order and reduce cognitive load in the home space. In general, this is a very important issue affecting the problems of ecology, psychology and society.
“Put the house in order before criticizing the world”
Jordan Peterson
