How Should I Set Up My Workspace for Focus?

The most evidence-backed workspace change is simple: keep your phone out of sight. Beyond that, brighter light may help alertness, moderate background noise may help creative work, and open-plan offices can reduce face-to-face interaction. Background music, especially with lyrics, tends to hurt reading and memory tasks rather than help, and there is no proven ideal room temperature. Some popular tips, like screen height, are expert opinion rather than tested advice. This page is not medical advice.

Not medical advice. If you have eye strain, posture pain or a condition affecting concentration, see a clinician.

Put the phone in another room

In two experiments, people whose smartphones were simply nearby had less available cognitive capacity, even when they successfully avoided checking them. The authors call this effect brain drain, and the costs were highest for people most dependent on their phones. Leaving the phone in another room, not just face down on the desk, is the easiest change to make.

Other labs have tested the idea since. A 2023 meta-analysis pooled 22 studies with 43 effects on memory, attention and general cognitive performance. It found a significant overall negative effect of smartphone use and presence, but the effects varied a lot between studies and cognitive areas, and by the country where the study was run. So the cost of a nearby phone is probably real but modest and inconsistent. Moving it out of the room costs nothing, which is why it still tops this list. See also social media and dopamine.

Light

A 2018 systematic review of 68 studies found brighter white light increased self-rated alertness in most studies, though many found no effect. The effect of colour temperature and blue light was unclear, and few studies found effects on reaction time. The authors concluded that “better powered studies are needed.”

Andrew Huberman suggests bright overhead light earlier in the day and dimmer, warmer light later, on his workspace episode. The evening part relates to sleep and circadian timing; see the light and circadian rhythm guide and the morning sunlight protocol.

Does music help you focus?

This is one of the most searched workspace questions, and the research mostly says no for demanding work. A 2022 systematic review covered 95 articles with 154 experiments. In most cases it found no effect of background music on task performance. Where there was an effect, music tended to hurt memory and language tasks, music with lyrics was worse than instrumental music, and the costs showed up on difficult tasks rather than easy ones, and in introverts rather than extraverts.

In practice: silence or steady ambient sound for reading, writing and learning; instrumental music, if you like it, for routine work or to lift your mood before you start.

Noise, ceilings and open offices

Huberman uses the ceiling-height research to suggest higher-ceilinged spaces for creative thinking and lower ones for detailed work. That is a reasonable experiment, but the studies were not about productivity.

The open-office result matters for focus too. Workers in the two companies studied did not talk more after walls came down; they withdrew into email and messaging. If you work in an open plan, headphones and a booked quiet room for deep work can stand in for the walls you do not have.

Is there a best room temperature for focus?

Many articles quote an ideal office temperature, often from a 2006 analysis by Seppänen and colleagues. A 2021 meta-analysis reanalysed that relationship and found its prediction accuracy was very low. Pooling 35 studies, the authors could not find a relationship between temperature and office work performance, either across the range found in most offices (20 °C to 30 °C) or a wider range (18 °C to 34 °C). They stressed that this does not prove temperature has no effect; the studies measured performance in too many different ways to tell.

The practical guide is comfort: adjust the room or your clothing until you stop noticing it, rather than chasing a magic number. For sleep, temperature matters more; see bedroom temperature for sleep.

Plants and a less bare desk

Minimal, clutter-free offices are popular, but stripping a space bare may not help. In three field experiments in large commercial offices in the Netherlands and the UK, researchers compared lean offices with ones enriched with plants. Two of the experiments followed workers over weeks and months. In all three, the offices with plants did better on perceived air quality, concentration and workplace satisfaction, as well as on measures of productivity. These were single field studies, so treat a plant or two as a cheap experiment rather than a proven fix.

Screen height and posture

On the same episode, Huberman suggests placing your screen at or above eye level, arguing that looking up supports alertness and looking down promotes calm. We did not find a trial testing screen height for focus, so treat this as opinion. Choose a height that is comfortable for your neck.

A simple setup checklist

Based on the phone studies and the rest of the research above:

• Phone in another room during focused work.
• Bright light earlier in the day; dim it in the evening.
• Moderate background sound for creative work; quieter for detailed work if that suits you.
• Skip lyrics for hard tasks: Music with lyrics was the most disruptive in the music review.
• A plant or two: A low-cost change that helped in office field experiments.
• A dedicated space if you can, especially if open-plan noise disrupts you.
• Work in blocks: See 90-minute focus sessions.

For the rest of the toolkit, see the focus and cognition guide.

Limits of the evidence

Most workspace research uses short lab tasks with students, or field studies in a few companies. The tasks were set by researchers, not people’s own work, where deadlines and motivation also matter. Effects are small and vary a lot between people, so the best setup is the one you test on your own work. The light review and the music review both call for better studies.