

Ask HN: What are your tricks for using your environment to influence yourself? - carpdiem

I came across the John Cleese video on creativity recently, and his comment about setting up boundaries in space and time to allow yourself to be creative without distractions really struck home. I wrote up my own thoughts here (http://www.intellectualpornography.com/2010/09/one-oclock-daily-controlling-your-environment-to-control-yourself.html) but if you don't want to click, I'll copy and paste my top three below:<p><i></i>To do lists: they're great, but, in particular, I always write things like "catch up on Facebook" and "read my RSS subscriptions". I don't know why, but for some reason this lets me resist the temptation to hit the refresh button throughout the day. Refresh is the mind killer.<p><i></i>Coffee shops without a laptop: when I really want to work through a problem, I'll camp out at a local coffee shop, and leave my laptop, and even my phone if I'm feeling adventurous, at home. It's amazing how little pull the internet has when you're physically distant from any means of checking it.<p><i></i>Having other people depend on me: I value my word very highly, and so while I might slack off on things that only affect me, I'll go to great lengths to uphold even implicit promises that I've made to others. That's why, whenever possible, I try to take on new study projects alongside a friend.<p>So what tricks do you guys have for manipulating your environment in order to help put yourself in a particular frame of mind?
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da5e
Turn off the computer. Lay the yoga mat out the night before. When reading
stop at the first great idea and do some action toward it.

