Welcome to Day 2 of the Habits Reboot week. If you missed Day 1, please go back and start there. Today we will dig into two more Weapons of Mass Distraction and accompanying reboot solutions. These two again come from Jay Shetty and are detailed looks at our environment. Sounds perfect to me!
Let’s go!
WMD #3 – Workspace Audio
As a professional musician with highly sensitive hearing, this one sings to me! The sounds in our environment can seriously hinder our productivity and creativity if it isn’t right for us. Pause for a minute and consider what sort of audio environment you work best in.
- Quiet?
- Noisy din like a coffee shop?
- Music on/off?
- White noise?
- Insanely loud?
Of course, it depends on what the work is, but we are all unique and there is no right or wrong answer. Define yours.
My answers:
When I am writing, I like not only quiet, but also stillness, as if movement from others in the house (animals included) creates inaudible sound. It is impossible and ridiculous to think everyone will bend to my wish here so I create the environment for myself by getting up early, giving myself the quiet, still house I prefer.
SUPER TIP – If I spill over into waking hours for others, I put my noise canceling headphones on – BEST TOOL EVER. I don’t actually play anything, I just wear them as giant ear mufflers. As Victor Frankl said:
Totally not his intended context, but gosh darn if that idea doesn’t fit most everything in life!
On the other hand, when I am working out, I like pumped up music. I put on the same headphones and crank it up LOUD.
Sounds Perfect Reboot
What can you do to your work environment/s to make it fit your audio preferences? Is it working as is? Are there changes you need to make? Maybe you never even considered the impact sound has on your productivity, creativity, ability to focus? If you can’t change it to fit perfectly, try the noise canceling headphones trick, either to create silence or add the sounds you prefer.
WMD #4 – Downtime Temptations
I feel like we are living in a Max Headroom world, where we can’t handle a moment of downtime and everything moves at lightning pace. If anything requires a wait – a page loading, microwave timer, on hold on a phone call, waiting for someone to finish a thought, whatever – how often do we mindlessly pick up our phones and flip and scroll and check and swipe?
Guilty?
Guilty.
Those downtime moments aren’t going away and the Max Headroom attention span and pace isn’t either. So, what if we changed the environment and filled it with different, interesting things to do during those moments? What if we put our phones away, tethering them to a charger similar to house phones that are attached to the wall (remember those?) and set up our environments differently?
What if we placed books everywhere so we picked those up instead? Our house doesn’t have to look like Karl Lagerfeld’s (top image) but you get the idea. What if we set out projects for ourselves and our kids? What if we replaced clutter with fun stations, similar to Montessori schools?
Environment Reboot
Today I’m going to swap out my clutter hotspots for fun spots. It is CLEAR that my clutter hotspots aren’t going away, so why not fill them with interesting, fun things that invite engagement rather than mess? Books, mini art, Perplexus puzzles, and ideas from my family.
What can you change in your own environment to foster better engagement and eliminate the mindless phone distractions? Think outside the box, try something totally different and new. Then please come share! I’d love to hear what ideas you come up with, what sounds perfect to you!
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