Functional Environments
When your various environments are functioning correctly they should be supporting you in being successful. A functional environment, when in place, helps make completing your actions and reaching your goals simpler. The environment, by just being there, provides the structure for success and because of this you need to put less energy into the tasks that you are attempting to accomplish.
Example of a functional environment
Marketing websites and marketing newsletters were two of the environments that I leaned on heavily during the summer. These sources of information provided me with a background in marketing I did not have, and with the support I required to move forward. By not having to come up with all of these ideas on my own, I saved energy.
These two environments supported me in being successful.
These two environments were functional.
Dysfunctional Environments
When environments are no longer supportive and no longer saving energy they have become dysfunctional. The problem is that we do not always immediately realize that our environments have become dysfunctional, and end up continuing with environments that are eating up energy and actually hindering success in some way.
Example of a dysfunctional environment
The marketing newsletters that I received over the summer are an excellent example of a dysfunctional environment that I did not identify immediately, and because of this, they ended up taking energy from me on a fairly consistent basis.
During the spring I read every marketing newsletter sent my way. I would eagerly scan through the information and pick out the pieces that I thought would work for what I am doing. I enjoyed reading the newsletters. However, during the summer I began moving the newsletters to my “Marketing” label in gmail without even reading them. I figured these newsletters were still a supportive environment; I would just need to read them later.
I was being delusional.
Flooded inbox
I finally realized my marketing newsletter environment had become dysfunctional after returning from a three-day camping trip with my family. I opened my gmail account to 45 email messages, of which 41 of them were marketing newsletters and four were from actual people that I correspond with.
I realized I would never have the time to properly read all of them, so started moving them over to my “Marketing” label once again. This required thought, which required energy, and none of this energy was moving me forward.
Wasted energy = dysfunctional environment.
Repairing Environments
Once you have identified a dysfunctional environment you will need to alter, eliminate, or replace this environment in order to stop losing energy.
I repaired my marketing environment through elimination. If I opened and read a newsletter it stayed on my list. If I moved it to my “Marketing” label without opening it, I removed myself from the subscription list.
Nice and simple: I don’t read it, I don’t get it anymore.
What is one simple action you could take right now to clean up one of your dysfunctional environments?
For more on environmental challenges check out this post on quitting environments that work.
Enlightening. I have many blogs that I’m subscribed too and I’ve known that I’m spending too much time reading and commenting. Many don’t support much besides the social aspect but its more from feeling obligated to comment. I hadn’t thought of them as being dysfunctional but you’re right, they are.
Christina,
There is such a balance between being supported and time management. I would love to interact way more with other blogs, but I have had to figure out exactly what you have mentioned: which ones provide me with support and value, and which ones do I feel obligated too. I have had to cut back on the “obligated” blogs so that I have more time and balance in my life.
However, I think it is also important to note, and I think I missed this in my post that, if you change an environment and discover that you are now missing something important in your life, you may want to return to that support environment again.
So, if you decide to stop commenting on some blogs (hopefully not this one!) and after a certain amount of time that doesn’t feel right, you can always return again.
Jeremie
Aaah, yes. It’s the small stuff. This is why I created my “clean off the kitchen counter before going to bed” rule. Also, last night on the Fun Girls call I asked for advice on managing my google reader feeds. So much unread info, why bother reading it?
Could you post what you learned about managing Google Reader? I have tried multiple times unsuccessfully to delete unwanted/unread blogs and yet they keep reappearing. I have folders set up for different topics and I’ve now set up a Z folder to put all the blogs that I can’t manage to delete. Since the folder is at the end of the alphabet, it drops to the bottom making it easy to ignore.
You don’t “delete” unwanted feeds, you choose “unsubscribe to feed” in drop down menu.
I learned (a) to remove google reader from my igoogle homepage. Too distracting!
(b) Caro had a great suggestion – create a folder for new feeds, like a temporary holding cell before moving blogs up to ones I read regularly
(c) Meet a friend named Mark Allasread. So liberating!