To achieve your goals in business and life, you need to take action. We need to complete the right activities and avoid the wrong ones.
Most of us know, for the most part, which activities are the right ones and which activities are the wrong ones. We know that we should contact our past clients and database to add value. We also know that while social media is a tool, mindless scrolling is not productive. We know that eating a salad is a good thing, and we also know that we should limit our sugar consumption.
We often rely on internal motivation and discipline to help us make the correct choices, however despite the best of intentions, we can easily get off track.
Something that is often overlooked and extremely powerful is the effect that your environment can have on helping you make the right choices and to take the right action.
You will not send handwritten notes if you don’t have any notes or postage on-hand, and you will eat more junk food if you keep it in house or near-by. These are two examples that illustrate how the way your environment is set up, will affect your results.
The key to setting up your environment is very simple… make the right things easy to-do and the wrong things hard to do.
If you want to acknowledge referrals with a small gift when the referral is given, then pre-buy those small gifts in advance to have them readily available. Instead of having to make an extra trip to the store, make it easy.
If you want to stop endlessly scrolling social media, delete the apps off your device as soon as you are done checking them. Plan 2 – 3 time slots throughout the day to check-in. Yes, you will need to download the apps each time, but the time savings and focus will far outweigh the 60 seconds required to put the apps back on your phone.
Figure out what you need to be doing more of in your business and life. Take some time to plan your environment to make these activities easy to do. Make sure you have everything you need ready and prepared in advance.
Then, determine what you need to do less of. Take some time to plan how you can make these things a lot harder to do.
With a little creativity and some adjustments to your environment, you will make an incredible shift in the progress towards achieving your goals.
