🪴 Making Your Space Productive

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This week: We're diving into environment design, which is all about removing time-wasters from your work environment. Read on for environment design tips and tricks!

🪴 What’s Environment Design?

Environment design is a productivity method featured in Atomic Habits, a book that needs no introduction.

The big idea? Creating an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.

With some foresight and strategic tidying, you can design an ultra-productive workspace that literally gives you some extra time back.

Let’s dive into how.

🫚 The Roots of Environment Design

Environment design comes from a 1970s movement to make Japanese factories more efficient.

The first step was identifying all activities that wasted time or slowed production by even a few seconds — for example, workers walking to get their tools.

Once all time-wasters were identified, factories were renovated to remove friction.

The movement was a big success, resulting in more efficient workers and higher quality products.

🧮 The Secret to Good Environment Design

Japanese manufacturers knew that removing friction from your environment gives you more time to spend on the work that really matters.

And the more time-wasters you cut, the more time you’ll free up!

In Atomic Habits, this approach is called addition by subtraction.

Let’s say you’re constantly misplacing your backpack with your work materials. You might start your workday by spending 15 minutes looking for your bag.

By placing your bag in the same spot every time, you’ll regain those precious 15 minutes.

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Now, let’s jump into tips to get started with your environment design!

🧑‍🔧 3 Techniques for Designing a Productive Environment

Take a page out of Atomic Habits with these tried and tested environment design techniques.

🔄 Reset Your Workspace

Always prep your workspace for the next work session so you can dive right in.

Ideally, you’ll reset your space at the end of each workday. Your process might include:

• Placing the next day’s to-do list on your desk

• On your computer, opening up the doc or app for the first thing you need to tackle

• Returning all charging cables to the right places

• Opening your textbook to the next chapter you plan to study

💻 Startup & Shutdown Routines

If resetting your workspace each day feels too difficult, start smaller with startup and shutdown routines. These are mini rituals you’ll complete each time you start and finish work.

Add a task that feels easy to do consistently — like placing the next day’s work materials on your desk.

With enough practice, these routines will become second-nature!

👁️ Essentials Front & Center

The items you need to achieve your goals should be given pride of place in your environment.

For example, if you’re trying to stay hydrated while studying, keep a water bottle on your desk.

Likewise, remove items that encourage bad habits. Put your phone in another room, or swap out junk food for healthier alternatives.

🪅 Flocus Picks

A curated list of things worth sharing.

• Atoms (app) — You’ve heard of the book Atomic Habits, but did you know its author just released a companion app? Try it out for better, more consistent habits!

• sunday reset with me (YouTube) — Get inspired to reset your space with this cozy vlog from Michaela Bento!

• 8 Biggest Productivity Time Wasters (Article) — Not sure which time-wasters are holding you back? Check out this article for more examples!

🖥️ Flocus: All-in-One Dashboard

Check out Flocus, our free, browser-based dashboard, for more tools to design a productive environment! Featuring a custom Pomodoro timer, ambient sounds, aesthetic backgrounds, and more.

 👀 Psst — you might notice a couple new features we just dropped. Be one of the first to check them out!

Open in Browser

Struggling with procrastination or distractions? Try removing the biggest time-wasters from your environment.

You might be surprised by how much it’ll boost your productivity!

Until next Sunday,

Flocus Team