Thoughts on Environment and [Mental] Productivity

Yesterday I was having one of those days where things I wanted to get done, were just not happening.  There was nobody to blame but myself.  I was at the point of having a minor mental breakdown–I have had plenty of mental breakdowns over the past six months–when I took a step back.  I realized that I wasn’t going to get anything done and then I went and didn’t.  I came back to my computer last evening wanting to write about something but having no inspiration.  Then it hit me.  What if your environment helped and hindered your productivity? Immediately I knew that this statement was true–a messy environment leads to disorder and failure at moving quickly and completing tasks.  But what about a non-physical environment, what about the environment inside your head?

For the last 6 months I have been living out of a suitcase.  I would leave college and go home on the weekends to visit with my family and friends.  Each Sunday evening I would have qualms about going back to school; there was too much work, I wasn’t enjoying the classes I was taking, I didn’t understand some of the information they were trying to force feed me, and ultimately I was not having a good time being there.  This would build up, and build up, and I would become unstable and complain about it.  I was not able to cope mentally and that made me unable to cope physically.

Environment and [Mental] Productivity

The environment you expose yourself to physically must be neat; or at least organized in some fashion that you understand.  You don’t want to have all sorts of tasks lying around that make it hard to get things done.  Yesterday I had a lengthy list of things to get done: contact schools, look for a job, change cell phone area code, feed dogs, etc.  However I could not get these things done because I found myself too worried about the condition of my room.  There was laundry lying around because I didn’t have hangers.  I didn’t have hangers because my closet was already full with clothing.  A vicious cycle begins with overloading yourself with tasks to do.  If you try to put in too much information, your mental computer wont be able to handle it and in turn you will find your physical self helpless.  Therefore, by keeping and environment clean you will be more productive.

As for a mental environment, it needs to be small.   One can not deal with having a huge area to memorize, maintain, or think about.  For the last six months I was constantly living between home and school, I had two lives.  I had two rooms to memorize where I put things.  Two groups of friends to keep up with and manage.  Everything that used to be simple and straightforward became doubly hard because there was two of everything.  My mind could not take the mental expansion that was occurring.  Greek and Roman philosophers used to take a single favorite place, map it out in their minds, and then return to that place in order to memorize series of words, objects, lists, or whatever.  The point is that for you to be mentally stable you need something constant, and that constant functions better if it is small and and have personal meaning.

Increase Productivity By

• Keep areas neat or organized
• Doing tasks right the first time - this way you will not be thinking about how you could have done it better
• Do not overload yourself with tasks to do - being productive is not about how much you do, but what is worth doing
• Rid yourself of unneeded tasks or delegate them to others - however not your spouse or significant other because they will get mad if they have to clean up the books you threw on the floor
• Allot a small amount of time to get things done - this is called Parkinsons (when you give yourself less time to do something, you’re less likely to put off doing it.  Tim Ferris talks about this in his book the Four Hour Work Week - I recommend reading it for advice on productivity and streamlining, some of it is a bit radical)
• Keep your mental locations small -you will focus better and have a better memory