Is it worth it? What can we get by spending 10,000 yuan to modify the workstation?

In his book The Meaning of Work, James Suzman, an anthropologist at Cambridge University, believes: "For 95% of human history, we have never placed work in a dominant position as we do now." Nowadays, more and more young people are mentally fighting against jobs that they do not love by calling themselves "oxen and horses" and "malos".

However, in the past two years, a group of young people seem to have given different answers to the meaning of work. They began to bring the explosive renovation style to the workplace, opening a new track of "fine decoration of workstations", including the forest style of planting flowers and grass, the feng shui style of paying attention to the location layout, and the health style of placing Chinese medicine cabinets. Some people even spent 10,000 yuan in just one year to buy various trendy toys and figures to transform their workstations.

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The practice of changing the workstation has aroused heated discussions among many netizens. Some netizens joked: "Isn't this just like a donkey buying itself a good millstone to make itself more motivated to grind the millstone?" But some netizens also said: "I can't imagine how happy I can be working in such a workstation."

So, is it worth it to modify the workstation? What value can it provide us?

Keep a relaxed and happy attitude

To revamp a workstation, one often transforms the originally simple and plain workstation environment into a unique area that suits one's own personality through careful design and layout.

In fact, since the late 1960s, scientists have begun to pay attention to the impact of the environment on employee productivity and have created a new interdisciplinary discipline: Environmental Psychology, which believes that there is an interaction between people and the environment, and that the spatial environment we live in has a great impact on our feelings and behaviors.

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Psychologists have done a lot of research, proving that professional interior design can effectively improve employee job satisfaction and work performance. For example, warm colors can evoke people's comfort, and bright lighting environments can give people a positive and warm atmosphere.

For us workers, our workstations are where we spend at least one-third of our time five days a week, which naturally has a great impact on our psychology and behavior. The practice of renovating workstations, such as placing green plants, flowers, ornaments, etc., is essentially improving the physical environment of our work, making it more comfortable and personalized, so as to make us feel happier.

In addition, a study investigated the relationship between office workers' job satisfaction and motivation and the personalization of the office environment. The results showed that employees who prefer to place personal items and design workstations have higher job satisfaction and motivation. The researchers believe that the reason is that such practices provide people with a sense of belonging, just like returning to your own familiar place, which often brings us a relaxed and happy feeling.

Therefore, although work can be boring or bring us a lot of pressure, netizens have used the way of transforming the workstation to tell us that this is only part of the work, not all of it. Even if you just put a few pots of flowers and plants and a few favorite small ornaments at the workstation, it can provide us with certain emotional value and keep ourselves in a relaxed and happy state of mind besides the boredom and tension of work.

Improve your sense of control and restore your mood

In the endless stream of workstation transformation styles, we can find that workers have expressed a lot about the psychological feelings and meanings that "reforming the workstation" brings to themselves: changing a wallpaper with "I don't have time to listen to your empty promises" is to provide an outlet for negative emotions, creating a "shopping mall" with a lot of snacks seems to be very fulfilling, and raising "green" bananas on the table improves the happy communication among colleagues...

Transforming your workstation is actually a form of DIY (Do-it-yourself) or organization and storage, which can also bring many benefits to our mental health.

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A psychology study recruited 465 college students to investigate the psychological benefits of DIY activities. The researchers found that living in the present and emotional repair are two common benefits. The researchers believe that doing some creative activities by yourself, from selecting materials to the final results, can bring people a sense of accomplishment and awaken people's positive emotions. When we are in a tense and irritable mood, if we can shift our attention to creative activities, it will have a good regulating and repairing effect on our emotions.

Secondly, DIY activities can highlight our individuality, thus making us feel more autonomous and in control. This is because highlighting individuality is a way of expressing and confirming oneself. When we can show our individuality and uniqueness, our need for autonomy is met, and we feel that we have a certain degree of autonomy over our own behavior and environment, which is particularly important for maintaining a person's optimal performance and happiness.

Finally, DIY activities can also indirectly increase the frequency of our social participation. Humans are social animals, and socializing is almost an instinctive need. Maintaining a certain social scope and frequency can effectively reduce negative emotions such as anxiety and depression.

Therefore, whether it is "fine decoration" of the workstation or slight changes through planting and placement, it can bring many positive changes psychologically. The most important thing is that we express our sense of autonomous control through the transformation process and alleviate the burnout brought to us by work.

Everyone may have their own opinions on the meaning of work to us, which does not mean that everyone should treat their workstation as a "home". However, from a psychological point of view, the popularity of modified workstations is actually a reflection of the young generation's emphasis on their own mental health. Although work takes up a lot of our time and brings us some pressure and negative emotions, we can still choose a positive way to cope with it and find our own balance between the two roles of being a screw in the workplace and an independent individual.

References

[1] Al Horr, Y., Arif, M., Kaushik, A., Mazroei, A., Katafygiotou, M., & Elsarrag, E. (2016). Occupant productivity and office indoor environment quality: A review of the literature. Building and environment, 105, 369-389.

[2] Miller, NG, Erickson, A., & Yust, BL (2001). Sense of place in the workplace: The relationship between personal objects and job satisfaction and motivation. Journal of Interior Design, 27(1), 35-44.

[3] Collier, AF, & Wayment, HA (2018). Psychological benefits of the “maker” or do-it-yourself movement in young adults: A pathway towards subjective well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19, 1217-1239.

Author: Chen Yufeng, Master of Developmental and Educational Psychology

Reviewer: Yang Xiaoyang, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, Sichuan Normal University