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Setting up your home office thoughtfully and with a modicum of advance planning is the way to avoid the downsides and maximize the benefits of working from home.

Chances are you have everything you need to work from your home or apartment. The big challenge is carving out the ideal workspace. The perfect home office combines comfort and efficiency, inspires productivity, and adds to—rather than detracts from—the home environment. A great home office design achieves balance and helps the worker do the same.

Home and office, relaxation and work: these can seem like daunting and sometimes competing goals, but this book can help you achieve them. Whether you’re a customer service representative who does most of your work on a computer, an editor who works mostly with physical printouts, or a lawyer who goes about the bulk of your business on the phone or by way of video, this book contains all the information you need to create a comfortable, customized workspace that fosters creativity and productivity. Use the information here to create a home office that does everything you need it to do, in exactly the ways you need to accommodate your work.

Start with the three key considerations every good home office covers—efficiency, comfort, and separation. Efficiency ensures you get your work done as quickly and easily as possible. Comfort combines ergonomic features and fixtures that make the physical workspace not only tolerable, but pleasant throughout the workday. Separation is one of the biggest issues in setting up a home office. It means developing a space that doesn’t interfere with other activities in the home and vice versa, so that you can effectively step away from the home office when your workday comes to an end. Get it right and you’ll still enjoy your home as a place you can comfortably live, socialize, relax, and even forget about work. Separation is also important in other ways. If your workspace is too integrated into the home, then noise, family members’ activities, and even pets may intrude on the workspace and your productivity time.

Home office spacing has to balance accessibility and unrestricted movement. In this relatively small whole-room workspace, the placement of the desk allows for comfortable movement behind it and plenty of room in front for visitors and meetings.

As this highly efficient and quite handsome office proves, a backyard utility space can provide an excellent place for your home office.

Correctly integrating any home office is more complicated than it might first appear. Beyond the obvious concerns of the proper equipment, a place to sit, and the right amount of storage for whatever you use and create in the process of what you do, there are a lot other considerations, which we’ll cover in this book.

First things first, though. You’ll start by figuring out the perfect landing spot for your new work area. Once you’ve

chosen that spot, you’ll develop the the layout and choose the furniture and equipment that will make your work possible. You’ll deal with extending any necessary services to the workspace and getting your technology up and running. Finally, you’ll work on getting the look and feel of the space just right, so that it is a pleasing place in which to spend long hours making a living.

This can all seem a little overwhelming. Don’t worry. This book has your back. Start by taking a breath and turning the page, because the rest of this book will lead you step by step through the process. Save yourself some time by making notes as you read, or just mark pages that apply to your particular work situation. Follow the process laid out in these chapters, and one thing’s for sure: creating your home office will be as enjoyable as it is rewarding.