Anthony Zhou Week 12: Taking Advantage of Your Environment

 You put down your phone and look at the time on the bottom right hand corner of your screen. It’s super late and you’re the only one awake in the house. You sigh as you turn off the lights. You can get it done during flex instead so you go to bed.

There have been so many times on a Sunday where I have the entire afternoon free to myself, and somehow I still end up awake at twelve trying to finish something that I could’ve done in two hours. The next morning, as I brush my teeth and feel like trash, I try to figure out what went wrong.

Most times this inefficiency and procrastination can be attributed to distractions. Have you ever just put everything aside and annotated an article for an hour straight and been surprised at how much you can get done without any distractions?

These distractions come in the form of your phone, the little fidgeting gadgets on your desk, and the internet. Clearing your workspace of any distractions will increase your productivity a hundredfold. 

This is why I believe that your environment is one of the most powerful things in our lives. It can impact our productivity, which determines if that one assignment will be turned in on time or not. Having a clean and productive environment can also improve your mood which can then improve the quality of the entire day. And most importantly, with those two impacts in mind, they can collectively grant you those few hours of extra sleep that we all covet.

Not taking advantage of a powerful and productive environment will lead most down a road of inefficiency and possibly failure. So I implore everyone to reevaluate their workspaces and take advantage of the power of a productive environment free of distractions, as it will improve the quality of life.


Comments

  1. Shriya IyangarFebruary 28, 2025 at 5:32 PM

    Hi, Anthony! As I read and related with the first few paragraphs of your blog, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed with myself. More often than I would like to admit, I too have time throughout the day that I hope to dedicate to catching up on homework or studying for tests, but I find myself sitting at my desk at 10 p.m. after an unproductive day with a large pile of work to get through and somehow also manage to sleep. Because of this, the insight that you share throughout your blog about the power our environment holds over our well-being is really relatable and valuable. My time throughout the day is often lost to the distractors you mention like my phone, while other times I just get lost in thought, but cultivating a focused and motivating environment around me would decrease a lot of these distractions.

    As I read your blog, a few things I really appreciated were the multiple images, which added a creative and personal touch to your blog, and the consistent addressing of the audience with “you,” which made me continuously reflect and relate with your writing. Thank you so much for sharing such a valuable post this week, and I hope to actually learn from it and modify the environment around me to be more productive!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brody ButlerMarch 3, 2025 at 5:15 PM

    Hi Anthony! As I read your blog, I felt an immense amount of relatability, especially this week. I had the entire day yesterday to finish annotations for Precis 3, taking up at noon and expecting to finish them by 2. I ended up finishing at around 11:30 at night, and that doesn't include SOAPS or Rhetorical Triangle (which I have yet to complete). How do I have an entire day to finish this simple assignment of highlighting three and a half pages worth of writing, and take over eleven hours to finish it? I came up with random excuses to justify this, but it all really came down to distractions. With my computer AND phone sitting in front of me, I ended up spending three times as much time on those than I did on my article. So, I decided to change things today by going to Sujus after school, and as of right now, I have completed five late assignments I haven't touched in over two weeks. Bottom line, your post speaks an immense amount of truth, and the message really captivates the junior year experience.

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