How Your Environment, Online and Off, Can Amplify or Hinder Your Business

Let’s cut to the chase — It’s time to declutter your life and business for peace of mind and better results….both online and off.

I’m not talking about the ozone-lacking sky above your head. I’m not even talking just about the room in which you work. When I say environment I mean:

• your office
• your city
• the people you surround yourself with
• the thoughts you let into your head
• the information you feed your brain –both digitally, via print, television and otherwise

All of these things affect your productivity, your creativity and your wallet. For real.  Here are a few of the tips I shared on my Monday free Coffee & Convo call on how to maximize your space, time and energy by clearing out the clutter, shifting your perspective, and rearranging the furniture, the view and your thought patterns. Do these things, and you’ll notice a lift in spirit and probably your pocket book.

1. You’ve Got (TOO MUCH) Mail:
If you’re like me, you have slowly subscribed to more and more “things” over the years. I turned around one day and found that 90% of my emails were from group deal sites, business lists, training webinars that added me to their permanent lists and other “stuff” that I rarely opened. I’d signed up for a free report or guide on someone’s sight and then never opened another thing from them. Time to clean house.

Subscribe to only the lists and newsletters that you actually open and read on a regular basis. Unsubscribe from the rest. You can follow them on Facebook or elsewhere if you think you might be missing something.

2. Start the day with breathing exercises, meditation or some other form of slow, inwardly-focused ritual. Don’t skip this step to deluttering your mind. It’s arguably the most important thing you can do to make a difference in your stress and success levels.

3. Calendar things you’ve been putting off — vision boards, doctors appointments, massages, office cleaning. Calendaring it sets a different commitment level to “getting it done” than To-Do lists, of which I’m not a huge fan.

4. Shift your perspective — rearrange furniture, bring in more natural light, take a 10-minute walk, add fresh flowers or lucky bamboo to your desk, change out the pictures and frames, hang a poster that inspires you.

5. Find a reason to get out of your office and go do work in an inspiring place — Europe, the beach, the mountains. You’d be surprised at how many more clients and partnerships I make when I do this. The creativity flows, and the clients love it.

I’m doing a group workshop and private intensives by the beach in Los Angeles in mid-February. You’d be amazed at how much clearer my clients get when they are inspired by scenery, allow themselves to get away from all the distractions of home and commit to doing business the way it’s meant to be done in the 21st century — away from the office.

6. Simplify your message for cleaner, clearer social updates. This is about cleaning out the digital clutter. Be clear in what you want people to do on your site, on your Facebook page, on your blog or in your newsletter. Be helpful to them, too, by giving value without overdoing it. Short, easily digestible answers work better in getting through to people in the social arenas.

7. Limit the blogs you read and the time you spend on social – it will keep your work there focused and concise for bigger impact.

There is a way to break patterns painlessly. Add these to your routine slowly. Make sure they are fully integrated before adding another, so that you’re sure they all will stick.

What are things you do to declutter your thoughts, environment and message? Share in the comments.

Tags: changing patterns, declutter, inspiring office spaces, kicking bad habits, office environment, stress-free

This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at 3:32 pm and is filed under Advice, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.