Today, we will look at M - MODIFY YOUR ENVIRONMENT TO COMPLEMENT YOUR GOALS

Our immediate surroundings play a major role in goal setting. Many people overlook their environment because they don’t realize that their environment can impact on their goals. Success or failure in whatever you set out to accomplish can be affected by your environment. But that is nothing to worry about because you can influence your environment and make it support your success.

For example, if you want to read and the environment is noisy, you can find a quiet room to read in to avoid the noise or if you are in the office doing some work and you do not want any disturbance from colleagues you can let them know that you have a deadline and would not want any interruptions till you are done. These are examples of modifying your environment to suit our purpose.

I will proceed to discuss the two ways that can help you with this stage of P.R.I.M.E.R. goal setting method. The first is to implement your action plan and react in the face of obstacles that threaten to sabotage you. The second is to be proactive. This, for me, is the best way out because you take the initiative to identify environmental factors that might pose a problem and shape your environment in a way that circumvent those factors.

See a two-step process below;

Step 1 - Single Out Potential Environmental Obstacles

Distractions and temptations are two forms of environment obstacles. Some obstacles can come in both forms. To deal with the obstacles, project what the possible challenges could be as regards your high-priority ambition.

Recall that we identified “work smarter” as an area of attention relevant to this HPA.

Let’s consider environmental factors that may distract or tempt us from following through;

Littered work table

Delayed work due to chats

Backlog of uncompleted tasks

Lack of focus due to interference by colleagues

Having identified these environmental obstacles, they can be addressed them in a reasonable manner.

Step 2 - Brainstorm Compensation Measures

Here, we will observe each environmental obstacle and come up with a practical way to manage it. This provides the tools to overcome challenges without derailing from our goals in the face of such challenges. This is a way of planning for potential hazard to minimize impact.  

Problem: littered work table

Solution: discard all unwanted materials and arrange table immediately

Problem: backlog of uncompleted tasks

Solution: attend to uncompleted tasks before moving to current ones unless urgent

Problem: Lack of focus due to interference by colleagues

Solution: abstain from engaging in discussions that is not related to the work at hand and ask your colleagues to give you time to finish your work.

It is quite impossible to eliminate distractions and temptations but planning ahead enables you to tackle them and overcome them when they arise. It also gives you the edge to make consistent, onward progress toward accomplishing your goals.

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Ciao.

Emmanuel Dorgbaa

Your Coach