Disclaimer: Some people are more affected by this technique than others. Some of you may find these to only help a tiny amount, while others might see a tremendous change.
Tell me, do you often find yourself in need of focusing on a project but somehow end up on facebook instead? Do you lie awake at night, waiting to fall asleep?* Maybe you have a hard time getting in the mood to go out with friends? Well I have the solution to all of these problems! Sounds too good to be true? Well it's not. Untrue I mean, it really does work. Or for me at least.
Let's start at the beginning shall we? I am a lover of both psychology and sociology. (and since I have a hobby as a career, it's only fitting that I have a career as a hobby, right? :] ) I looooove learning about how the mind works, all the weird quirks it has, and I especially love learning how to take advantage of them. What I'm about to talk about can basically all be related back to Pavlov's Dog, but it is essentially conditioning yourself to respond to certain "cues" in certain ways. For example, during one of my college semesters, every time I needed to work on an illustration project I'd sit myself down in our library's Starbucks and work all day on it. And I mean all day. Like from noon until 9pm. Now normally if I were to be working on that at home, I'd probably take a break, get distracted, and eventually end up doing something else instead of my work. But without fail, every time I worked at the library I was in the zone, and completely engulfed in my art. The reason being of course, because it's what I had conditioned myself into doing. Because the very first time I went there, I was behind on a project and had to get it all done. So I really had no alternative but to work on it all day. And because I stuck with that routine, I made it easy for myself to fall into. Starbucks = work.
And here's the great part, this can be used to your advantage in a million different ways. Even so much as sitting in one chair of your house as opposed to the couch can change the way you act. You don't necessarily need an entirely separate location for this to work. What you do need though, is to make sure that the first few times, you stick to your plan. If you want a certain location to be where you get work done, you need to force yourself into staying the course. Because if you slip up and somehow end up on Pinterest, it's not gonna work. It's the first few times that are the hardest, but after that, your head will be in the zone, it will be stuck to your schedule and you'll find distractions... well... far less distracting.
But wait, there's more!
Scents. I first noticed just how easily influenced I am by them this last Christmas. I put on a perfume that I hadn't worn since high school, and suddenly, my mood changed. For some strange reason, I very specifically... felt like people should start complimenting me for no reason at all. Yeah. That's only slightly bizarre right? Well I thought about it for a second and realized that I only ever wore that perfume to my high school dances. And what's the first thing you do before you go to the dance, when the smell of your perfume is still fresh? You get a million pictures of yourself taken by your parents and they ooh and aah over your dress. Wow. Four years later, four whole years later, and the smell sent me right back to my senior prom.
Okay, one last thing! I promise!
You can literally do this with anything. You wanna workout more? Wear specific clothes just for getting fit. You need to focus on studying? How about always drinking a certain flavor of tea? The idea here is that you make whatever you want your trigger to be exclusive to whatever you want to accomplish. (and that part is very important. the key to this is the exclusiveness of the trigger) And here's where those opening remarks come in. This isn't new information either, but studies have shown that spending a lot of time in your bedroom doing things other than sleep isn't so good for you. I've had that problem in the past, where spending too much time in bed while on my laptop or doing homework will make falling asleep harder. So if you have trouble sleeping, condition yourself for it. Limit the time you spend in bed to actual sleep, not browsing facebook on your phone. And if you really have sleep issues, try some lavender scents as well. They sell a specific sleep scent at Bath & Body Works, but really any lavender scented things work. The point is, if you want to help yourself get into the mood of something, there are plenty of easy ways to do it. For me, I like to specialize my perfumes, a few for just any day, one for special dinners or guests (it gets me in my most polite, chipper mood), another for going out with friends (which helps me be a little more talkative and friendly), and yet another for getting things done (I used it if I'm going to clean house, do laundry, get work out of the way, etc.).
So yes, that was a longer post of mine, but I hope it helped! Because seriously, this shit is cool. You could be better at something just by giving yourself a trigger. And it's super easy, and flexible! Your triggers could be as drastic as being in a different town, to as simple and tiny as popping a mint on your tongue. It's completely up to you! So go get better at stuff.
*if you have a serious sleeping condition i'm obviously not talking about you. go to a doctor. of course that doesn't mean you can't try what im saying, but i cant guarantee anything.
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