Finally, I’m happy and everything is in its place (sort of!). Moving office can be a daunting experience but once done, brings a great sense of satisfaction and an impetus to do more work (or write a blog!). Not that my experience was a huge change in real terms – except to me! I swapped my office and bedroom.
To put this in context the bedroom was at the back of the house overlooking a park – great outlook and fantastic light. The office was in the ‘spare room’ that is a bit smaller and much darker as it doesn’t have much direct natural light – which I love. That didn’t make for an overly productive work environment but my mindset was that the bedroom should have precedence and be in the nest room. There is an easy chair in the bedroom with a footstool – I love it but was always banging my shin going around the bed. After hearing this a few times my partner suggested why not swap around the rooms. Initially I didn’t think much of this but it got me thinking……
I spend much more of the day in the office whereas the wonderful light in the bedroom was largely going to waste. The easy chair could also stay in the ‘new’ office with more room for the footstool – a great place to read documents and texts. There was a phone connection in both rooms so that wasn’t a constraint. Ok, decision made…work to do.
Well, it didn’t really take that long to do and after a few trial layouts (and more advice) I had a great office – better structured and above all, a better working environment. The other side of this is there is also a terrific new bedroom – although it is slightly smaller it is a different shape, which is actually far more conducive to fitting in bedroom furniture. The fact that is darker is also a good thing and aids sleep. The other benefit of the big move was that it was an excellent opportunity for spring-cleaning and re-organising (and finding things that I forgot I had!).
Now why am I sharing all this? I know one of the reasons I enjoyed the whole exercise was that I like change – but only if I think (at the time) it makes me more efficient with my use of time or resources. Shifting around my furniture from time to time is something I’ve always done – without analysing the why too much. This is also how I approach my spreadsheet financial models.
Constantly thinking about ways of making them more efficient, smaller in size or with less detail – while at the same time giving more relevant results and being more user-friendly – this is especially important if others are to use them as well. Starting to use a spreadsheet that has been developed by someone else usually has a steep learning curve and the more sophisticated the model the longer this takes. Of course a good modeller will use methods and techniques that can cut this down greatly (such as putting assumptions and variables together on one page rather than scattered throughout the spreadsheet).
From time to time this means that the whole spreadsheet gets turned on its head if you come up with a different way of looking things (such as allowing for a breakdown by day if you’re looking at coming up with both weekly and monthly data – and that doesn’t have to be as hard as it may sound). Also if the you or the client wants to introduce another variable into the picture (such as multiple cost centres with individual reports) that might require a radical reworking of the model.
Of course the other side of all of this is that you can’t spend too much time on change or re-organisation or do it too often – it can be a good way to prolong procrastination or to defer something. However if done right it is another and better way of looking at things, whether that is your workspace, personal life or a financial model of your business.
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