Use These Inspired Celebrity Tips to Create a More Productive Home Office [Infographic]

If you work from home, you’re well used to its benefits. No unnecessary time and money spent commuting. More time to spend with family and friends. Greater flexibility over your workload.

It seems the working-from-home trend isn’t just limited to us mere mortals. Indeed, a crop of celebs and well-known names, including Ellen DeGeneres, author Neil Gaiman and Arianna Huffington are known to be home workers.

Can these famous folks teach us a thing or two? Could their working-from-home strategies help us become more productive and better at getting things done? Furniture retailer Pottery Barn has assembled a new infographic about the home offices of the stars. Let’s dive in and see what they can tell us about working from home.

Your home office desk is really important

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres’s home working space features, at its center beautiful desk that compels you to look at it. Because your desk is where you spend most of your day sitting, take your time to choose one that’s  right for you. Make it spacious, so you can host a laptop, smartphone, desk lamp, and stationery on it, and still have plenty of extra room to spare. It also needs to be attractive—sitting at a desk you love helps you feel comfortable and aids your wellbeing, key requisites for productivity.

What’s more, proper desk posture is important. Use a chair that allows the soles of your feet to sit flat on the floor, and place your monitor two to three feet from your face so you’re not leaning forward or back. Keep the top of the monitor at eye level so your neck is positioned correctly.

The power of sleep

Does productivity correlate to the number of hours you work? If you load your working day with task after task, will you get them all done, on time, and on brief? We doubt it. Author and journalist Arianna Huffington agrees, and staunchly believes that taking regular rest or sleep breaks can really help improve one’s productivity.

Unlike the office, your home is the perfect place to sleep. You’ve got a bedroom, after all! If your home office is large enough, you could invest in a small bed or sofa to take quick naps on, which will boost your alertness and productivity. If not, just head to your room for a 10-minute power nap.

Be creative

Even working from home, with all the benefits it brings, can get monotonous at times. So, how do you keep your brain alert, so it’s fresh with enthusiasm and ideas? Science fiction author Neil Gaiman has made creativity a big part of his home office space, and you can too.

Creativity can be anything—whatever floats your boat. What inspires you? Makes you feel curious about the world? For Gaiman, it is a connection with the outside world. (His home office is an outbuilding.) For you, it could be something completely different. Music, poetry, pictures, paintings…

And to spur yourself into action on the days your creative synapses aren’t quite firing, make a ‘contract’ with yourself to work anyway.

Be organized

As well as being creative, being on top of things is key to enjoying successful working-from-home days, when you actually get stuff done. Entrepreneur Martha Stewart is an organizational expert who specializes in decluttering, and her home office is a shrine to keeping things ultra streamline. Having an organized workspace can also help you cut work-related expenses by 15-20 percent.

At the start of each day, make sure everything is where it should be. For really busy periods, have mini-declutter sessions every couple of hours to keep everything neat and clean, helping you to power on.

Do you have any tips for working from home productively? Let us know.

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