Time Management - How To Put Your Environment To Work For You
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by: MichaelAdams
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When most people think about time management, they think about mental discipline, following processes and other hard core "will power" techniques to stop procrastination and get more things done in less time.
Sure all of those things can and do work, but at what cost? Wouldn't it be more fun to learn other ways of improving your time management that cost very little in terms of time and mental discipline? Let's skip those "Brute Force Time Management" techniques and instead try something easier.
Buckminster Fuller (or "Bucky Fuller" as he was called by his friends) is reported to have said "Environment is stronger than will power". Sounds smart, doesn't it? Consider this. If you're out of shape and want to improve your health, how hard would that be to do if you're locked in room full of delicious sugar cookies. On the flip side, how easy would that be to do if you lived inside of a fitness center? Pretty easy don't you think?
This same sort of idea goes for almost everything, yet most people don't think about setting up the right environment for efficient time management. In fact, most people kind of think of anything having to do with time management as a chore. Let's turn that around.
From wherever you're at, look at what you can see around your workspace. Pick a few simple items around the room and ask you're the question "Do these items support my time management and productivity goals or do they steal my energy from reaching those goals?"
For each item, if it doesn't support your goal for better time management, get rid of it or otherwise handle it appropriately.
Most people have at least one element they should toss. Oddly enough, when doing this exercise, people suddenly see their television as a major distraction. Something that not only slows their productivity, but which also can completely destroy your ability to accomplish your daily goals. If you have a television in your work space, unplug it and move it out of the room.
Another distraction can be something as simple as a pile of papers on your desk. Clearly they are important because you've "piled" them up on your desk. The real question to ask is whether that pile supports your time management goals or not. When it's time to find something in that pile, chances are you'll have to spend a bit of extra time digging through all the papers to find the one you want. You may even spill the papers on to the floor at some point, causing you to waste time having to pick them all up.
These two examples might seem silly, but you get the point. Eliminating the non-supportive elements in your environment is the first step to creating an environment that supports your goals to be better at time management.
If we were to take this one step further, the next step would be to improve your environment by actually adding things which add to and make it easier for you to accomplish your time management efforts. We'll share hints on how to do this in other articles.
About the Author
For additional tips and hints about time management, be sure you claim your copy of Michael Adams' exclusive free expert guide on tips for managing your time and multi-million dollar projects.
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