Build Your Optimal Environment, Then Build Your Skills.

We are products of our environment

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

Let me start by asking you a couple simple questions. Would you go into your garage to take a nap? Would you go into your bathroom to eat dinner?

If I had to speculate, your answer to both of those questions is likely going to be no. Why though? Well, likely because those environments are not optimized for those particular activities. You likely don’t want to eat dinner with the faint stench of a toilet you have put off cleaning for a little too long.

Though these examples are a little extreme, conceptually we can take this logic and apply it to our lives in regards to being more productive at work, and optimizing our mental and physical health. Lets look at a couple common examples that you, reader, will likely have in your life so you can start to build out an optimal environment for work and growth and live up to your fullest potential.

We are now going to make 2 assumptions:

1. You sleep at some point
2. You work in an office at a desk at some point

The optimal sleep environment

For many years I thought sleep was something that just happened, some nights I got better or more sleep than others and it just is what it is. However, once I committed to getting up earlier than I need to in order to get more done throughout the day, I started looking into the science behind optimizing sleep instead of just taking it for granted.

With sleep, the thing you have the most direct control over is the environment you are sleeping in, because you can’t really do much once you actually fall asleep. So, here are a few things you can do to optimize your sleeping environment:

• Get your room temperature more or less to 65 degrees, as heat is one of the biggest disruptors of REM sleep.
• Consider using white noise, this will help turn your brain off so you get to sleep faster and don’t lay awake thinking about yesterday, today, or tomorrow.
• Eliminate as much light as possible in your room, this can be done by hanging blackout curtains over windows. Any kind of light can disrupt melatonin production, a very important sleeping hormone.
• Eliminate phone and screen exposure in the same room you sleep in, the blue light will again disrupt your melatonin production.
• Consider getting a smart bulb (not that expensive on amazon) in a lamp in your room where you can change the colors of it. Darker red and amber colored hues tend to stimulate melatonin production and help you wind down.
• Consider using an app such as SleepSpace that utilizes a gentle alarm clock. Instead of the typical obnoxious phone alarm that jolts you awake like you are in the trenches of war, a gradual alarm starts quiet and slowly gets louder over a few minutes so you wake up more naturally.

Even if you were to try a couple of these, over a few weeks I guarantee that in the morning you will feel more awake sooner, and you will have more energy throughout the day. And you can directly control all of these by manipulating the environment you sleep in.

The optimal work environment

The million dollar question people always seem to be asking is “How to be more productive at work”. Wouldn’t it be nice to get done in 5 hours what takes most people 10 or more? That is how I tend to operate so that I can spend more time living life and less time working on things I don’t necessarily always want to be working on.

Utilizing the same logic above, we can do our best to optimize the environment we work in and let a higher level of productivity come naturally. Here are a few things you can implement:

• Utilize a cool blue and white light in your working environment, these can help you concentrate as well as wake up if it is morning time.
• Keep your desk clutter free, as lots of papers, objects, etc. can give you plenty of reasons to get distracted when trying to maintain a productive flow state. It is also harder to find things you need when you need them.
• Consider using 2 monitors when working, this eliminates the need to constantly switch around to different tabs, minimize/maximize apps and browsers etc on the same screen. As an example of how to best use this, when writing this article I keep this story on one monitor but then quickly mouse over to the one next to it to look things up or grab a URL for you to reference. Once you try this you will likely never go back to just one.
• Keep water and/or coffee/tea at your desk. The mental and physical benefits of being hydrated are well documented, and the same goes for caffeine consumption. Keeping them at your desk will prevent you from getting up over and over again to get a sip.
• If possible expose your desk/office to natural, outdoor lighting. Humans are meant to see and feel sunlight and the benefits are again well documented.

I hope this helps you understand that by making a few simple changes to your environment, then over time you will experience greater productivity and mental/physical benefits. I want to again emphasize the over time phrase, as none of these are miracle cures or magic pills.

Good things take time, and if you put yourself in the right environment consistently overtime then you will move closer to your peak state and performance.

I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, and hope that you will continue to find happiness in whatever you do.