The home office is one of the many home trends that has popped up this year, mainly brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic, whilst in 2019 working from home seemed like an exclusive perk retained just for business elites and hipsters working in tech, now the home office is a regular thing to have and almost half of the country is now working from home!
So now that thousands of workers are now working from home for the first time in their careers, home working set ups have gone from using the kitchen table as an impromptu desk to people setting up delightful home offices for them to work in. With the amount of Google searches for ‘Home Office’ almost doubling since the country went into lockdown.
So, if you’re new to the world of working from home or are setting up a new home office, we have a few gadgets that will help you in your day to day work life, help you cut down on distractions and keep you on task when working (We’ve left out obvious choices, such as desk chairs, keyboards desks and computers, because by now you’ve probably got the basics sorted out).
1) Smart Speakers
If you don’t know, smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home are an incredibly helpful gadget, they act like a traditional speaker, but will have a handy voice assistant which can help schedule your day, find you quick answers to questions that pop up through the day and so much more (We’ve found a handy guide on all the functions most smart speakers can do).
No matter what smart speaker you have they’re excellent for day to day work life, it’s like having a PA to help reduce your load, if you have a meeting, you can ask your smart speaker to note down the time of the meetings to remind you and much more, if you have a lot of scheduling involved in your work day, you’ll notice that it helps take the load off of you.
2) Electric Blinds
One incredibly important thing when working is light, anyone who’s ever worked in an office will tell you that with no natural light and just light from ceiling bulbs, it gets hard to work and your brain doesn’t really know what’s going on, that’s because humans thrive on natural light. But at the same time, you don’t want the Sun beaming directly into your eyes.
This is where the genius of an electric blind comes in, you can programme your blind to go to different positions based on the time, meaning that you can programme it to give you the perfect amount of light throughout the day, without you needing to get up and adjust the blind. Even better, you can get some eco friendly sets, like these electric blinds which are available with a solar panel to keep them charged up.
3) Blue Light Glasses
When you’re working in an office, you won’t be looking at your screen all day, you’ll have chats with co-workers, make a coffee or even have meetings, but working from home cuts down the time you’re away from your screen, meaning that your eyes won’t get as many breaks from the screen during work.
Excessive amounts of blue light from computers can damage your eyes and make it harder for you to sleep, so as you’ll have less breaks from your screen, you should try blue light glasses which will filter the blue light out so that your eyes don’t get damaged. Using these glasses at work will also help keep you focused as blue light can also cause ‘brain fog’.
4) Tablet
Lots of people consider tablets to be computers in their own right, but a tablet can actually be a great tool for working from home, you can use it as a display screen to look through data, display your schedule or read a presentation through, use it for all your zoom meetings, so that you don’t have to keep closing your work down to take a call.
All in all, a tablet is a nice little auxiliary device for those of us working from home, you don’t really need to get the latest and most expensive tablet, as for basic work needs a £100 tablet should do the trick if it’s used as an extra display and meetings device.