Environmental Cues Trigger Habits

Can goal attainment really be effortless? Yes! How? I'm sharing a science backed and real life proven strategy to, yes, attain your goals effortlessly with environment modification. Last week I told you to write everything down. Now what?

Your Brain On Paper

If you were a good lil student, you have started to write down all of your interruptive thoughts. Stop trying to remember everything, just write it down! Now you have all of these thoughts on paper, your brain on paper and you may be overwhelmed. The next step, is to decide can it wait till Sunday? If so, pop that baby into the Sunday Basket® for safe keeping until it can't wait. If not, add it to your to do list for the day. If you find you are always saying yes it can wait, but you don't have a lot of motivation to get it accomplished, it's ok to toss it. Our goals, energy, money, where we live, stage of family life, our house, and other factors change projects we want to do. You aren't going to get it all done because you aren't getting it all done now. Let yourself off the hook for projects you are not longer interested in finishing.

Evolution of Systems

Our families are ever changing and I was reminded of this during my grand-turnity. Abby had her baby and I am home more helping to take care of her and my grandsons. I don't cook. But I do make Thanksgiving dinner. I thought it would be nice to make until Greg pointed out that had I just asked Greg to do it, he would have. I abdicated cooking many years ago. Greg is used to cooking and didn't appreciate me taking up space in the fridge while the turkey defrosted. You see, back in the day saving money was the goal. My cooking and grocery shopping "reality" is from those days but our family has changed. I picked up a couple of turkeys while they were cheap around Thanksgiving knowing I'd be home after Abby had the baby. But I don't grocery shop or cook anymore. I could have saved a lot of my time and money had I just let Greg do it if I had just thought about today's reality of my family dynamics and roles.

Ok the next thing to consider is your environment. First, do you still need the blender on the counter? You know it's not about the actual blender, it's just an appliance or thing you may have on the counter that you are no longer using. Smoothies may have been an everyday thing that is no longer. I moved ours to the basement, sometimes I forget, I should just pop a lil note inside the cupboard to remind me. I mean, no one is looking in my cupboards. Is your environment supporting your current goals? Could you modify your environment to better support your goals?

Decluttering and Organizing Surfaces Thoughts

I realized when I wanted to start adding collagen to my coffee that my environment was not set up to support my goals. I had about 9 steps to make my coffee, I'd get to my car and realize I had forgotten the collagen. If you are trying to lose weight, remove the cookies and put fruit in that same place. You can't eat what is not in your house. And you can't rely solely on willpower. AND it signals cues to your brain about your new goals. Science shows that when your environment is modified you can attain your goals effortlessly. As you realize what you want to modify you will need to declutter and organize that space.

The Productive Home Solution may bring light to spaces you want to modify and it will walk you through the decluttering and functionality of that space. There is a caveat here. You will have more success if you have the foundation of the Sunday Basket® established because you will already be in the habit of writing down interruptive thoughts. I went through the thought process of setting up a coffee station. In moving things around, it brought to light the cup/bottle situation for my grandsons. I wrote things down and will take action on a Sunday. The time you spend modifying your spaces to match your goals will give back time to your future self. Then the systems you put in place will simply need to be maintained. The synergy between The Sunday Basket and The Productive Home Solution will have you saving time, cognitively offloading, gaining support for your goals and making better choices too!

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