Concept
Environment for starting
The environment for starting is James Clear's rule applied to procrastination: make the good behaviour obvious and the bad one invisible, so the work is open and one step away when you sit down and the distraction is in another room. Every piece of friction removed tonight is a decision you need not win tomorrow.
Procrastination is often an environment problem dressed as a character one. The thesis is three clicks away and the phone is in your hand; whichever is closer wins the first minute, and the first minute decides the morning. Clear's remedy is to redesign the room before the decision is needed: the file open on the screen before bed, the notebook on the chair, the browser tabs closed, the phone charging somewhere you have to stand up to reach. Brian Tracy's version is to prepare thoroughly the night before, so the 'frog', his word for the most important task, is the first thing you see. Combined with Clear's two-minute version (a start small enough to take under two minutes), the environment means the session begins almost without you: you sit down, the work is there, the first action is tiny, and the distraction is not. It costs ten minutes in the evening and buys the morning.
A real-life example
A doctoral student leaves her laptop open on the analysis file before bed, puts her phone in the kitchen, and leaves a note on the keyboard that says only 'run script 1'. In the morning she is looking at output before she has decided anything.
How to use it
- 1Set up the desk the night before: the work open and one step away.
- 2Put the phone in another room, and close every tab that is not the work.
- 3Leave a one-line note with the first action, so the morning starts with an instruction.