Time Management: Environment is Stronger Than Will Power

I think Buckminster Fuller got it right when he said "Environment is stronger than will power".
Think about it for a minute. If you're trying to lose weight, but you're sitting in the middle of a candy factory, how had do you think it will be to not eat candy?

On the other hand, if you're living in a health spa, I bet you could avoid eating candy much easier, even probably start working out too.

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.

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. I call these things "Smart Time Management" techniques.
Let me show you what I mean with a quick and effective exercise.

Take a look around your work space. Pick out 5 easy to indentify objects in it and ask yourself "Does this support my goal to be better at time management or detract from my goal to be better at time management?"

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.

For additional strategies on "Smart Time Management, be sure you claim your copy of author Michael Adams' exclusive free expert guide for managing your time and multi-million dollar projects at: http://www.smart-time-management.com
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