I used to constantly rearrange my room when I was it when I was a kid I can remember so many nights staying up late pushing my bed across the floor dragging my toy box against the other wall all because I would get this sudden and suffocating feeling by its current layout that I simply didn't have enough open space in the middle for creativity or I needed more barriers to create different neighborhoods for all of my different toys so I've always been pretty in tune with the space around me and how it can impact our experiences and as it turns out that connection isn't just one of what my family would probably consider a multitude of strange childhood quirks studies have found that the physical space around us really does impact how and how well we work it impacts things like how productive we are very simply do we have what we need to do our jobs it impacts how happy we are doing our work do we have what we need to do our jobs without feeling like robots and/or prisoners and where we work is also a physical manifestation of our company's cultures is this a place that we want to show up every single day and does it attract the type of people that we want to work alongside but for decades the prevailing design to support us has been this now slowly companies beyond just tech startups or creative agencies are starting to recognize that perhaps these cubicle farms don't necessarily reap the happiest or most productive of employees in fact my guess is that some of you here today work in the opposite end of that office nightmare spectrum and that's the completely open floor plan which by the way has also been found to totally kill productivity and depending on who you ask may just be the worst thing to happen to our work spaces since Millennials joined the workforce and that's because what truly drives us is so much more nuance than simply the number or the placement of walls around us good office design considers elements such as the number of face-to-face interactions that were likely to have in a day because we are social beings and at least for the near future we have the pleasure of working alongside other human beings and it's good for us to work together in person especially when we're learning something new or working with new people for the first time but some of us are more social than others and who here hasn't had that shut up shut up just shut up I will jump out of that window if I have to listen to one more awful tinder date story moment and for that reason we also need access to quiet private spaces and in those moments where we're close to losing our cool another element that helps is to bring nature indoors to help calm us sunlight for example is a natural mood elevator and it's important that we get access to natural light our work days in addition even plants can help boost our creativity links to a theory that suggests even just looking at pictures of nature helps our mind shift into new modes of thinking in fact even the layout of the spaces around us can influence how we think for example large open spaces with high ceilings are better for more creative in free-flowing type work while on the other hand smaller spaces with more well-defined boundaries and lower ceilings are better for more critical or mathematic type work in good office design also builds in flexibility and that means putting desks chairs whiteboards even some walls on wheels so that we are able to reconfigure our spaces as we need them in the moment just like I used to with my room when I was a kid because our jobs are complex and it's important that we have the types of space we need to do the different tasks that we need to do now almost as often as I get asked about what good design looks like I get asked what doesn't work and very simply this I mean imagine having a pretty serious video call with one of your top clients and you're blinded it looks like you're doing it from the Sun or worse finding out that you've been laid off and a room that looks like this next one with stormtroopers staring down at you in authenticity is the number one mistake I see in office design now it's natural for someone to think of a Google when you think of an innovative workspace but if you're someone that's in the legal or accounting field going all-in on 100 100 percent glass walls isn't going to support your client confidentiality needs or if you're in the medical field going to an open floor plan isn't going to help you cut down on the spread of germs and help protect yourselves and your patient safety but I do recognize that probably most of us here today do not work in corporate real estate and therefore we'd probably get fired or kicked out of our houses if we started ripping down walls or making these major design decisions anyway but that doesn't mean that there's no ways that we can hack our workspaces to do better work whatever it is you do and wherever it is you do it now whether what you're just not sure where to start or you're a flat-out skeptic about all this I always recommend that people start small just choose one new behavior that you want to work on and use the physical space around you to put that new behavior into your way so if you're like me and you've got a desk job you can schedule all of your meetings in the furthest conference room from your desk to help build in some more natural movement and get you standing more throughout your day or maybe you're someone who wants to get to know your colleagues better especially those outside of your direct team I work with someone who puts his lunch a different fridge on a different floor every single day to increase the odds he's going to run into someone in the kitchen that he hasn't met before and be able to get to know his colleagues better or lastly maybe there's one part of your job that you can just never focus on hard enough or long enough to get done you can find another room another desk or even another chair that you only go to to get that one thing out of the way for me that task is actually writing my research and so there's a desk in the back corner of my office where I go to every time I'm having trouble just writing and now my brain is hardwired to know when I sit down there it's time to get this done lastly I know it's easy to scoff at the ping-pong tables the draught beer in the kitchen even the treadmill desks that have all become associated with the innovative workspace but try to resist that urge these can all actually be pretty important contributors to our productivity just like in any workout regime it's important to build in recovery days where your body is able to repair its muscles our brain needs that same kind of recovery if you've ever had your best idea in the shower or in your car driving home from work it's the same science behind active recovery for your brain we're consciously it's focused on a different task but subconsciously it's still working through those problems that you may have been stumbling over all day or all week so try and find time in your days and in your space to get outside and go for a walk and get that fresh air or head downstairs and play shuffleboard even if you're under 60 years old or crack open that beer because it's a 3 p.m. on a Friday you've been working hard all week and now I've told you but there's science that says that's okay thank you [Applause] [Music]