This week kicks off our office-crush campaign where we will be talking about where we love to work and how we love to work. The where and the how are more important than we sometimes realize. Not all great success start out in beautiful offices, the garage where Bill Gates invented Microsoft comes to mind, but having a comfy chair, natural light and decor matching your personality doesn’t hurt either and could actually foster the right frame of mind to keep you on track with your goals.

Let’s talk decor. Less is sometimes more and does not mean it has to be boring. At Ment, this is our office-crush style. We provide our members with private offices that are blank canvases waiting to be garnished to their liking. The mixture of large white and brick walls with neutral colors & natural light opens up all sorts of possibilities.

What are the things you can do to define your office-crush style that also fosters the right frame of mind? Here’s what we have found:

• Think about what motivates you and then have a reminder of this somewhere in your workspace where you will see every day you come to the office. Keeping tokens of past accomplishments are usually small and can be easily displayed. By having these near, they are great reminders of how far you’ve already come and can make you feel proud and accomplished throughout your day.
• The same goes for family photos, cheeky signs and goal lists, these are all reminders that could push you to keep going.
• A great desk chair. It’s just like a bed, you spend a majority of your life in it so it’s worth splurging a little to get it right.
• Not so glamorous, but invest in a document scanner or utilize the one we have for you in Ment! You will have less paper clutter and more desk space to keep clean and organized.
• Accessorize with items that bring you happiness which falls in line with the lifestyle of hygge or if you have been watching Tidying Up on Netflix (do it) she explains how you should only keep the things that give you a sparkle feeling. She may have been talking about clothes, but the same goes for your office. Want a bottle of champagne ready to be popped every Friday after work? Add a bar cart and get the celebration started. Because after all, if we aren’t celebrating our accomplishments, little or big, what are we even doing it for? You can check places like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for lightly used pieces that will keep your office design on budget.
• Colors. As you may already know, each color has a different meaning behind it. Bring this concept in through desk and office supplies like paper organizers, staplers, pen holders or mouse pads. Get creative!
• And to wrap it all up, it is recommended that you take the time every six months to do a cleanup and revamp things a bit to give yourself some new inspiration.

These are just a few and you can find out way more by reading our article pick for the week from Forbes called Create Your Dream Home Office Inspired By The Workspaces Of Top Influencers And Entrepreneurs. Guys – don’t miss out because the article is only about female entrepreneurs. There are some great tips in there for all office owners.

An office can be created anywhere & anyhow you want it to be. Not to keep throwing working from home under the bus, but it means that work is highly accessible to you at all times, and as a part of our work-life balance resolution we made (I know you haven’t forgotten about that!) we made a promise to work when work needs to be done and be present in our own personal lives just as equally if not more. As the cheeky sign says, “If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it.” Take the leap, start designing your own space in an office where you love to work and somewhere where you love how you work so that you can start achieving those goals, accomplishing the tasks and committing to yourself + your idea, whatever it may be.

Thousands of years ago, the tradition of napping or siestas began in Spain as a time for people to sleep though the hottest part of the day in order to avoid the sun’s strong midday rays. As the years have passed, the nap has evolved into many different forms of a break in the middle of our days. Here in the United States, our siesta is most commonly at noon for a one-hour lunch break to leave whatever it is we are doing but does not involve sleeping or rest of any sorts. For some of us, nap time is a past time that we left in our childhood years and now actively work through since it may be the only time during the day that we get peace and quiet. Just like the nap though, we, as a society, change, evolve and adapt over time and it looks as though the nap tradition is making a come back into our adult years and it may be what you have been missing all along.

A very common amenity you will find when visiting coworking spaces is a dark room with dim lighting, maybe a sound machine and platforms with pillows, or more commonly referred to as a nap room. Why? Because it has been proven that daytime naps of 20-25 minutes long can restore focus and motor skills while reducing stress and allowing you to reset and recharge for the rest of your day. This “amenity” was originally created by The Huffington Post after editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington collapsed from exhaustion at her desk in 2007. Huffington predicted nap rooms will one day be “as common as conference rooms.” Turns out they were spot on because here we are over 10 years later and they are found all over the place as well as what are called nap-pods (look. them. up.) which are found in the offices of tech giants such as Google, Cisco, and Zappos.

Nap time during my work day? I know what you may be thinking – like we have time for that. But isn’t it worth the time if it means you will get an increase in successful results within your place of work and employees since they will be better equipped mentally & physically? We think so.

At this time, Ment does not offer a nap room but that does not mean we don’t support it! We think it’s the missing piece to many of our days and the key to a healthy work-life balance. We invite you to give it a try. Make the time – it’s only 20 minutes out of 480. You can also try a coffee nap: drink a cup of coffee before your 20-minute nap and you’ll receive the brain revitalizing benefits of a nap, plus an extra boost as the caffeine hits your blood stream right when you wake up!