Environment is more potent than willpower.
If you want to succeed in a task, it helps to find the right location for the task.
But finding the right location is often easier said than done.
I spent over a decade volunteering at Tony Robbins events. Those events are textbook “overstimulation” — large crowds, loud music, a lot of interactions. In some contexts, that type of environment might cause my nervous system to shut down. Yet those events gave me so much energy.
I often do my best writing in the gym, with music blaring and lots of commotion going on around me. In fact, I generally focus better for a task like writing when there’s a bit of chaos around me. This is counter-intuitive to many people, but it works for me.
Ironically, that same high stimulus environment can be a problem when it comes to my workouts. It can cause my nervous system to dysregulate, making it more difficult for me to coordinate complex movements.
Whether an environment will be supportive of my tasks can also depend on the energy I had going into it: my general mood, how I slept the night before, what I ate, my current level of energy.
This is what makes it so hard: we can experience the same context and stimuli as draining or energizing depending on our preexisting state and what we’re trying to do.
When you have a successful session in any environment, make note of what you did and where. But also note the other factors that played a role: sleep, nutrition, how much exercise you had, the weather that day, what people were around you.
Often it’s the subtle things we hardly notice that make the biggest difference.
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