Redesigning your Environment for Optimal Performance and Creativity

A few days ago I logged into Facebook from my phone for the first time in weeks. On my laptop, I have the newsfeed obliterator installed, so I tend not to see anything. It was a sensory overload of shiny objects: status updates, ads reminding me of things I didn’t have or yet to have accomplished, and links. After about 20 mins of scrolling, I did what Jake Knapp recommends in this article about going without a smartphone and disabled safari again.

If you’re going to redesign your life for optimal performance and creativity, it’s important as Ultimate Game of Life founder Jim Bunch says to realize that “Everything you see, hear, smell taste and touch is an environment. And those environments are working on you 24 hours a day.”

It turns out that our environments are all interrelated meaning that one impacts the others. And the environments we are in each day either add or drain energy.

Below I’ve shared a few different ways I’ve optimized my own environments for optimal creative output and productivity.

The Physical Environment

The physical environments I deal with each day are my desk, my car, my clothes, etc. While this might not be ideal for everyone, I’ve found that the best way to keep an organized desk is to put everything away every day. That way I wake up in the morning with a clear desk and a clear mind. If I need a book, I get it off the shelf. I also make it a point to throw away any cups, wrappers, receipts etc that I might accumulate in my car over the course of a day. Other aspects of your physical environment include your clothes, the devices you use, and the place you live.

If you have ever cracked the screen on your iPhone and had it repaired, you know how it changes the way you feel almost immediately. While something like that seems minor, these kinds of tolerations actually drain your energy. So get a car wash, repair a device, or throw away clothing that’s completely wrecked.

The Digital Environment/Memetics

Your laptop, the websites you visit, the podcasts you listen to, and the apps on your phone are also environments. And our digital environments have become more cluttered and chaotic than ever before. So let’s look at a few

I have a tendency to save things to the desktop on my computer. The result is of course chaos. Even with a folder where I would move things to eventually, it still kept getting cluttered. Then I discovered the Hiddenme app. One click and the icons are all gone. Suddenly I have a spotless desktop.

The people you follow on twitter, your friends on Facebook, and the groups you belong to are all environments. Is your digital environment setup by design or by default? For most people it’s by default. I’ve seen people who are members of more than 300 facebook groups. There’s no way it’s possible to keep up with that many groups. It’s worth reducing that significantly. It’s also worth considering what the people in those groups are like. Are they people who are positive, uplifting and up to great things, or downers? You might be surprised to learn just how much some of these “avatars” are draining energy from your life.

The Ripple Effect

When you make a change in one environment it creates a ripple and changes the other environments. The most basic example is this. When you exercise regularly, you feel better, look better and this starts to impact your self-image.

Start by upgrading one environment. Then do another.

And if you want a detailed deep dive into these concepts, consider the following two episodes from our podcast

Listen to Jim Bunch on the Unmistakable Creative

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.

Every Sunday we share the most unmistakable parts of the internet that we have discovered in The Sunday Quiver. Receive our next issue by signing up here