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Read about the First Foundational Block of Success here.
Your physical environment is important to your success.
It is widely believed that if your surroundings are cluttered, you will not be as productive.
It has an impact on your psyche which means if you unclutter your space, you will also unclutter your mind.
When you open your mind, your thoughts and ideas will flow more smoothly. Keeping your physical environment clutter-free will lead you to more success.
Your physical environment plays a HUGE role in how you feel and your success.
Are your home and office helping you or hindering you?
Making your environment supportive of your goals will help you feel better and in turn, help you be more successful.
And that could possibly result in more opportunities or earnings.
Make it easy
It’s important to create a physical environment that will support you in your efforts.
Your environment can affect your motivation and productivity. It should help make your good habits and decisions easy for you.
For instance, if one of your goals is to eat healthier, you don’t want to have doughnuts and chips easily accessible in your house or office.
If you have healthier choices in sight, you will probably choose healthier foods.
Make it a habit
In Gretchen Rubin’s book Better Than Before, she states that habits are formed by first making a decision. Either to do something or to stop doing something.
But after repetition of the behavior, it becomes a habit with no decision-making at all.
A habit is essentially something that you don’t have to think about, you just do it.
With that said, you want to set up your physical environment in a way that makes decisions easier and more convenient so that you’re creating habits that help you achieve your goals.
Willpower and motivation are NOT enough.
A clean and well-maintained physical environment helps to foster a sense of self-command, which makes it easier to maintain good habits.
It can give you a surge of energy that makes it easy to use self-control.
Create Systems
When was the last time you looked for a physical document and couldn’t find it?
This is also a form of clutter. When you don’t create systems that help you retrieve items, you’ll waste time looking for them.
It’s not just physical documents that get cluttered…
Your digital documents may not have any rhyme or reason as to where they’re stored.
This can be just as distracting as looking for physical documents. 😧
Because people tend to deal more with digital documents these days, this is likely to cause more stress because your most important documents will be in this format.
Set up a system to organize your digital files as well.
Spend just 15 minutes
In just 15 minutes a day, you can conquer your clutter.
Use filters on your email, implement auto-payments with your bank’s online banking system or cancel a credit card you don’t use.
If you are feeling like you just don’t have time to simplify, it’s a sure sign you need to!
Decide on one small task to complete each day. Set a timer for 15 minutes and see what you can accomplish.
Choose one place
What room or area makes you the craziest when you walk into it?
What have you been meaning to clean out and declutter the longest?
Start there. It’s taking up mental energy you can use for more important things.
Find an organizational solution for every room in your house.
Get your family or housemates involved. The common areas of your house are not going to stay decluttered if you are the only one maintaining them.
Sit your family down and have a chat about why decluttering is so important to you and how it will benefit everyone.
Keep a donate box
Once you’ve made that first (or second) big trip to the donation location of your choice, you will still come across stuff that you didn’t notice before.
Keep a donation box in an out-of-the-way place so that you can toss things in as you find them.
When the box is full, take it to your donation center. 😌
Buy one, toss one
Make a new rule for the household: when you purchase a non-consumable item and bring it into the house, you must get rid of something.
For example, if you buy a new pair of shoes, either throw out a pair or place a pair in the donate box.
This rule works in two ways:
1) It helps you maintain the decluttered lifestyle you are creating,
2) It cuts down on impulse shopping.
You’ll probably be surprised to discover that there are no pair of shoes you currently have that you are willing to part with in order to have the new, shiny pair.
Problem solved! 👏👏👏
Become a minimalist
Streamlining your life and your possessions makes it much easier to stay organized and in control of your life.
If you’re not overwhelmed by stuff and the drive to get more stuff, you’re freed up to get on with what you want to do.
Having less clutter also makes boring household chores easier and faster. 🤗
You’ll be spending less time looking for things or tidying up your desk, apartment, or office.
If you are serious about adopting the minimalist lifestyle, then I really suggest you check it out this well-known book on minimalism.
Take action now
All people have clutter to some degree.
You may have a little bit of clutter sitting around or perhaps you have LOADS of clutter and it’s causing your life to be turned upside down.
Most people are somewhere right in the middle of these two situations.
If you need a little help getting more productive, my low priced eBook, Declutter Your Workspace , can help you be more successful.
This eBook will give you one small task each day for 8 days to provide you with guidance and motivation to help get your work environment set up for success (plus 4 bonuses).