The physical surroundings of where you do your work—whether in the office, at home, in a café, or elsewhere—can impact productivity, performance, and well-being. Learn ways to arrange your surroundings to help you thrive at work.

“While there are clearly limits to the places we have available to us for work,” write Brianna Barker Caza, Alyson Meister, and Blake E. Ashforth in a recent Harvard Business Review article, “there are always at least small opportunities to engage in placemaking. Take this opportunity to consider whether your workplace is working for you.”

They make the following recommendations to improve your workspaces:

• Evaluate the personal meaning of elements. “For example, if part of your identity is ‘nature lover,’ you may feel most aligned and productive in a workplace where you can see or interact with greenery (even in pictures),” the authors write.
• Act. “Although every workplace has various constraints, there are almost always ways of at least making tweaks within them,” they write. “For example, maybe you don’t have a private office at home but can negotiate do-not-disturb times with your family. Or, if you work in an open-plan office, maybe you could move to a cubicle away from the busiest areas and use noise-canceling headphones.”
• Rotate your spaces. “If you’re stuck on a problem or feeling lethargic and uninspired, it may be a signal that you need to work in a different place for a few hours,” the authors explain. “Research suggests that subtle shifts in environment such as ceiling height or natural elements can often stimulate a different type of thinking and influence your well-being.”

For more insights on workspaces, read “How Your Physical Surroundings Shape Your Work Life.”