How to prevent mental exhaustion and distraction when Working from home?

Whether you’re doing mental or physical work, the space you are in should come complete with lots of natural light.  Natural light is good for our mood and that has benefits for how good we are at problem solving, thinking creatively, getting along with others, basically all the things required for modern life.

Since there are times when natural light is just not sufficient (the extreme case of this is at night, of course).  Science also makes it clear what sorts of bulbs you should buy to help you perform as best as best you can—and never buy those bulbs with the coloured glass globes that are so popular at Halloween and at the end of the year, always use ones with clear glass.  Warmer bulbs and somewhat lower light levels help you relax enough to do creative sorts of brain work well and communicate positively with others, cooler and brighter lights are great for boosting concentration, however, or something physical.  Circadian lighting is best, see this article for more information.

Prolonged mental work is mentally exhausting, and when we’re exhausted mentally, nothing is as refreshing as looking at a green leafy plant or two (not more, more makes visual complexity to high)  or at an image of nature or, best yet, out the window at nature.  Looking at nature out the window is much more likely to be possible for people who live somewhere besides the city, however.  If you can’t look at nature outside your window, make sure that you can see it in a couple of paintings and photos in your workplace.  If those images also include water, all the better.  We have such a positive response to seeing water (gently moving, as in a stream or quietly burbling spring), that if we look out into an otherwise bare courtyard-type space at even a small fountain, we are as mentally refreshed as we are looking out at a Spring meadow.

What we see as we look around us can be distracting, for example, if we have views of other people, a television, or anything else that we might, ever, find interesting because something important to us might happen there.  We can’t help but being distracted from whatever we’re doing by views of other humans and attuned to collecting information about visuals that might be pertinent to us somehow, someday, someway.  Being very cognisant of what is going on around us drives how our sensory systems work—because when we weren’t, eons ago, we became some giant carnivore’s lunch.  The same things that mean we can’t ignore what’s going on around us visually, keep us from being able to block out what’s happening acoustically—so locate your workplace, add visual screens, etc., accordingly—will power will not be enough to eliminate the negative effects of distractions.