What comes to your mind when you think about success? For most of us, it’s working harder, longer, and smarter.
Sure you can improve your results through hard and smart work, but that’s just one factor in the formula of success. There are others factors such as environment and identity.
Creating the right environment will increase your productivity, effectiveness, and even your motivation. It will result in improved results.
Work from Home! Be Your Own Boss!
Those are the slogans many online marketers use to sell their make-money-online courses. The landing pages usually feature a woman in a bikini with a laptop on her lap “working” on the beach.
We all know that it’s impossible to work on a beach with a laptop due to the sun glare. And a laptop isn’t meant to be used on your lap because it gets hot.
Still, new people enter their emails and credit card information into those landing pages, year after year. How come?
Let’s Be Honest
Here are two scenarios.
- You work in an office. You wear serious clothes. You work from nine to five.
- You work at home. You wear PJs. You work whenever you feel like it.
In which scenario are you the most productive? In which scenario do you produce the most results?
You might prefer the second scenario over the first one, but you would agree that you’d be more productive and effective in the first scenario.
An office setting and serious clothes help you get into the mood of working. Your home and PJs make you feel resting and relaxing.
Home Office
Working from home has its advantages.
- Avoiding the daily commute.
- Flexible working hours.
- Relaxed, comfortable environment.
However, that doesn’t mean working in your PJs, lying in your bed, with the daytime TV in the background. You need to have an environment that helps you focus and motivates you to do your best work.
Create an Environment for Success
How can you improve your working environment to increase your performance?
- Is there any clutter on your desk and bookshelves that you can get rid of?
- Can you get a better desk and office chair to improve your performance?
- What are the distractions around you?
- Do you need to switch off your phone or activate the “do not disturb” mode?
- Can you clean up your computer desktop?
- Is your desktop wallpaper distracting you?
My favorite work accessory is noise canceling headphones. I listen to relaxing classical music. And I drink a few cups of coffee and green tea throughout the day. All of that helps me focus on the task at hand.
You might think that these are just details, but a series of small adjustments in combination make a big difference. If you made a 1% improvement every day, you would improve your life 38 times in a single year.
Which 1% improvements can you make in your working environment?
Investing in Your Environment
Do you use the best tools that money can buy? Do you use the best computer, smartphone, and software that you can afford?
Which apps are on the home screen of your smartphone? Do they increase your productivity or do they distract you?
How close is your home to your work? In what kind of a neighborhood do you live? I know these are the decisions you cannot make overnight, but they are worth thinking about.
Some of these changes might sound like a lot of time, money, and effort to implement at the beginning, but think about the dividends they’ll pay over time. If you can save an hour every day, wouldn’t that make a big difference over your entire career?
Design Your Home for Success
High performance doesn’t depend only on your working environment. Your home is as important as your working environment.
Does a big TV dominate your living environment and is it switched on all the time? Is your home, clean, neat, and tidy?
Do you have a quality bed to rest properly? I even pay attention to the temperature and humidity of my bedroom. I realized this plays a huge role in how good I rest at night and how good I perform the next day.
Conclusion
Your environment has a big impact on your success. If you haven’t paid any attention to your environment before, it’s time to take a critical look at it and optimize it for focus, productivity, and success.
You don’t need to change everything at once. You can start by making a list and go over the list one by one over time.
Changing your environment might demand your effort, time, and money, but it will pay its dividends in higher performance and success over time.
Burak BilginSoftware developer with a Ph.D. and 15 years of experience. I write daily on personal development and life lessons. Sign up to my email newsletter to receive a weekly overview of my latest content on personal development and life lessons.