We moved house a few weeks back and set up our home office and kids rooms in what we thought would be the best places for them. I guess you only really know after living somewhere for a while, but it turned out these rooms weren’t optimal and we ended up swapping them over last weekend.
The new office layout works heaps better, now I don’t have the sun in my eyes or need to put the blind down for half of the day, which wasn’t ideal! I’ve also got my whiteboards on the wall… which are super important to me in the way that I work and help me keep track of what I’m doing.
Because of where the new office is, it’s also made it easier to set up a wired internet connection, which I set up yesterday. The kids’ room has also ended up being a much better layout and gets more sun.
Where am I going with this? Well, it got me thinking about just how important our environment is and how we should optimise it as much as possible, in order to live happy and more productive lives.
This quote by W. Clement Stone pretty much sums it up:
“You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyse your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success — or are they holding you back?”
I’ve found moving office has been really helpful in achieving this, removing any unnecessary friction which being in the previous room was causing.
It doesn’t just apply on a room level, but also where you live in general. We’ve moved house a lot and often have the dilemma of living in a nicer environment but paying more rent or living in a… less nice environment and paying less.
It applies to geographical location too, I think that once you live somewhere you start to take on and associate with some of the characteristics of that place which mix with your own.
We once bought a house in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere on the South Island…. and to be honest, it never felt good to say we lived there – it just wasn’t for us. But I love living in Tauranga and feel a strong connection with this place, which helps on many levels.
You could even zoom out further and think about which country has the best environment for you to live in, this is what I did when I moved to New Zealand.
Think about your own environment and if there’s anything you could change to improve it. Whether it’s something as big as moving country or smaller, like putting up a whiteboard – your environment matters.
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