Thinking outside the office

The Positive People Framework

In this article Jane Pimm from J2People considers how changing your workspace can boost creativity, productivity and your mental health.

Albert Einstein is often credited with saying that ‘creativity is intelligence having fun’. However, I’m assuming he wasn’t sat behind a small desk in a large office when he was at his most creative.
I love my job, I love J2People, but sometimes I find I’m living in my office, focused on delivery and not coming up for breath. This summer I’ve had space and time to think about our business, where we want to go and how I can be at my best.

Where I have been at my most creative this month is running on a beach, walking round a lake with Jayne (the other half of J2) and sitting in my favourite Italian café at the local marina (helped by too many delicious cannoli and double espressos – we all need guilty pleasures!). I arrive back at the office, excited and ready to go. Changing your scene really does help to change your perspective.

The benefits of stepping away

Stepping away from the office often boosts creativity because it allows the mind to break free from routine and the pressures of work, encouraging fresh perspectives and ideas. Here are some key reasons why this happens:

• Mental rest and recharge: Constantly working can lead to mental fatigue, which stifles creative thinking. Taking a break or changing your environment allows your brain to relax, reducing stress, promoting wellbeing and making room for new ideas.
• Diverse stimuli: Exposure to new environments, people, and experiences outside the office can inspire creativity. Different surroundings can trigger new thoughts and insights that wouldn’t arise in the usual work setting
• Incubation effect: Sometimes, the best ideas come when you’re not actively thinking about the problem. Stepping away allows your subconscious mind to work on challenges in the background, often leading to creative breakthroughs when you least expect it.
• Perspective shift: Being physically distant from your regular workspace can help you see problems from a new angle. This shift in perspective can lead to innovative solutions that might not be apparent in your usual environment.
• Freedom from pressure: The office can often be associated with deadlines, meetings, and expectations, which can hinder creative thought. Being away reduces this pressure, allowing for more free-flowing and imaginative thinking.

Encouraging disruption of routines

To get the best from your people don’t be afraid to encourage disruption of routines and an environment where teams and individuals have space to be creative outside the confines of the office. One of the things I love most about being my own boss is that I can choose to change environments any time I need to. How great would it be at work, if going for a walk was promoted as part of the working day, providing energised thinking time, rather than something that needed to be shoe-horned into a 30-minute lunch break?

Today, I spent the first 15 minutes of my working day, sitting in the garden listening to the stillness and creating ideas for this blog. What are you going to do to think outside the office today?

Let’s talk

J2People are an HR Consultancy and we are passionate about supporting businesses to enable their people to thrive in the workplace. If you would like to find out more about how we can support you to do this for your business and promote a culture of creativity – we’d love to talk to you.

Please get in touch at hello@j2people.co.uk or visit www.j2people.co.uk