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.
Those kind of “Brute Force Time Management” techniques can work, but there are also other things you can do to help you manage your time better; things which take very little time and precious little mental will power.
A very smart man named “Buckminster Fuller” is quoted as saying “Environment is stronger than will power”. I think he got it right. If you’re overweight and trying to avoid sugar, how hard do you think that would be if you have a box of candy sitting on your desk at the office? Now if instead, there was a plate of fresh cut vegetables there instead, you’d probably find it pretty easy to avoid sugar at that moment don’t you think?
Most people don’t even stop to think about their environment as they go about trying to improve their time management skills. I think the idea of creating an environment to support your productivity and time management success is something to consider. Try something here for a minute and see what you think.
Sit for a moment and see what you see in your work space. Choose five obvious elements in your work space and pose yourself the following question “Does what I’m looking at right now help me reach my productivity and time management goals or get in the way of reaching those same goals?”
For each item, if it doesn’t support your goal for better time management, get rid of it or otherwise handle it appropriately.
For example, televisions are notorious for their ability to distract a person and also seduce them away from getting tasks accomplished promptly. If you have one in your workspace and can agree that it doesn’t support your better time management goals, simply unplug it or better yet, move it to a different 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.
Of course after you remove distractions and non-supportive elements, your next step will be to add elements to your environment that actually support your time management improvement goals. We cover more of that in my other articles.