Based on last week’s post about workspaces - now is the time to imagine your truly perfect workspace. What would be your ideal place to work? Describe as generally or specifically as you want. Think about:

• Visuals - what can you see (or equally important, what can’t you see?)
• Sounds - what can you hear (and, again, what can’t you hear? What are you shielded from?)
• Smells - do any particular smells make you feel secure and safe, or inspired, or invigorated?
• Objects - what ‘things’ do you need - and what do you not want there? A desk? a couch? a pile of cushions? Reference books? A giant whiteboard? Internet, no internet? Laptop? Notepad?
• Touch - what should those objects be made of - is your desk made of glass, or wood, or a door supported by four brick towers? Do you have carpet? floorboards?
• Surroundings - what’s outside your work area (or is your work area outside?) and how much of it can you see or hear?

Make sure you don’t just create somewhere that you’d want to be in, but somewhere that you’d want to work in. For example, I’d love to have an office with spectacular views of rainforest or mountains or rolling hills - but I know that, if I had them, I’d spend all my day “thinking” by looking out the window. (Now, an office that didn’t face those views that had an adjoining room that did - that’s different.)

Now for the hard part - look at your list of requirements and try to find the common themes. Is it ‘something to inspire me’, or ‘peace and quiet’, or the colour teal (guilty), or somewhere that feels secure? This is important, because unless you’re the next J. K, you’re not going to be able to have your wonderful perfect workspace that you just described. It's tough. Life happens. But if you work out why you want those things - what underlying problem or need they solve - maybe you can adapt your current space to something that works better for you.

The last step should be obvious - you’ve found what’s important to you - inspiration, peace, teal, security, whatever. Now, what steps can you take to make your current workspace fulfill more of that need? What objects, colours or things could you put near to inspire you? How can you make your area more peaceful? What can you get away with painting teal? What would make you feel more secure?

Repeat until you have a workspace that you’re comfortable actually working in. You’ll know this is the case when you’re actually working in it. And remember that your needs will change as you do. If you find yourself feeling frustrated in your physical space, or that where you're trying to write just isn't working, do this exercise again, and see what you can fix.