Basking in Full Spectrum Lighting
Here’s something that may totally fly under the radar of your consciousness. While most of us are aware that our home workstations should be adequately illuminated as not to strain our eyes, many of us forget about some of the health concerns that accompany the insane amount of time we spend at our desks.
Your computer monitor may illuminate your face, but this is not the kind of lighting that you need. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a very common condition that afflicts people in the winter and it’s largely because we don’t get the same amount of sunlight during those colder months. This can have a huge impact on your mood and productivity.
One of the most common ways to treat seasonal affective disorder is through the use of full spectrum light boxes. The light therapy is meant to mimic the full spectrum light that you’d get from the sun, providing all sorts of health benefits. A lot of this happens on a subconscious level, but its effectiveness has been demonstrated in several academic journals.
These specially-designed light boxes don’t flicker, so they’re not migraine-inducing like computer monitors either. Unfortunately, they can be quite pricey.
The Necessity of Background Chatter
If you’ve been working from home for any length of time, you’ll quickly notice that the silence can be quite deafening. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being alone with my maddening thoughts with only the clatter of my computer keyboard entering my ears. It’s good to have a home office slightly separated from the rest of your home, because you should be able to separate work from play, but this isolation can be rough on your psychological health.
When you work in a conventional office, you’ll hear the background noise of your co-workers. They’ll be talking on the phone. You’ll hear the photocopier in the background. You may overhear the meeting going on in the conference room. And you may partake in some water cooler gossip with your colleagues. These simply do not exist in a home office.
While you could certainly use an MP3 player, this can shut out the world. That’s why it’s better to have a stereo, radio, or iPod speaker dock of some kind. If you prefer, you can use the media player on your computer too.
“I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven, I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she’s filing then I should be able to listen to the radio while I’m collating so I don’t see why I should have to turn down the radio because I enjoy listening at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven.”
As Milton Waddams clearly illustrates, background music (or radio chatter) won’t necessarily save your sanity. He did burn the place down, after all.