Regardless of what you want to accomplish or improve; your effectivity, productivity or perhaps creativity; it is always a good idea to set up an environment that supports this, and which helps you reach the goal.

In order for this environment to be the most efficient you should try to keep the tools and material that you use easily accessable; the optimal placement of tools and material is right where you are yourself, I mean: within an arm length distance. This means that you do not need to disrupt you works flow once you are in the middle of something, just to get a pencil, paper, calendar, paint brush, reference book, research material or whatever the thing you need. By keeping things near you, they are available at the moment when they are needed.

Setting up a productive environment also include the surroundings, meaning adding to your work space things that you like and which give you inspiration and help you relax. These things are highly individual and could for instance be loud music for someone, total silence for another and perhaps an aquarium or a pinball machine for someone else.

You need to find out what environments makes your mind work the best in different situations and set them up accordingly.

You may have one single environment that you use almost exclusively or you may have many different "work stations" depending on what you do. The basics are still the same though.

For me these two simple guide lines..

1) to keep my stuff where I need it, on an arm length distance, and
2) to surround myself with things that enforce my wanted state of mind. Simply things I like.

..mean slightly different things depending on what I want to accomplish but this is the base for work on own projects:

My home office desk is where I usually work the most on Pensegi matters. Sitting there I have my reference material in the bottom drawer on the left side, also note paper and tools like stapplers, tape and pens are on my left side in other drawers. On my right I keep ongoing project materials in the drawers for easy access. On my desk I keep the technical tools I use such as the laptop, scanner and phone. The printer is placed underneath the table. Research material is placed in magazine collectors, as is also my to-do things.

All I need is there just an arm length away. Once I sit down I do not need to get up until I want to have a rest.

Of course it is not always possible to keep everything at your desk, but as far as possible in these cases I do try to bring the books or other things needed before I sit down. Just to avoid having to stop what I do later.

When I want to be really productive I know that I must focus, and I know that listening to music on a moderately high volume helps me do this.

I usually listen to calm music, as for instance songs by "Enya" or some classical piece, when I have many things that need my attention at once.

Listening to calm music would not work in a problem solving situation though, as slow music makes my mind stay calm and problems usually demand more quick and "aggresive" turns of thought, at least for me, so for this purpose I usually listen to more aggresive music such as hard rock or cross-over. Usually this is music by "Linkin Park" or "Die Krupps".

When I want to be creative I listen to EBM, electronic body music, since this has a tendency to make my mind see new possibilities.

Music can have a radical effect on our minds. You most likely also have some music that you know will place you in a special emotional state. Use this to your advantage! Find your productivity music, your creativity music etc. and see to it that it is available when you want and need these emotional states.

I use headphones (large ones) both at home and at work. This way I do not interfere with other person's creative spaces, nor do they interrupt with mine. :-)

These are some simple basics that may seem obvious to some, but there is a difference in knowing and doing...

My productivity increased a lot when I stopped just knowing this and actually made an effort to set up the environment and start practicing what I knew. :-)