This article was originally published in The Simplifier #48.

Article: Release the Power of Intention

By Shawn Tuttle

Do you park your car in the kitchen?
Do you think about cleaning your shower during a client appointment?
Do you take a week-long vacation right before a big project is due?
No, no, and no! What silliness is this?

Well, why wouldn’t you? Because they don’t belong there!

Without even thinking about it, you use the concept of intention for your surroundings, thoughts, and activities on a regular basis. American Heritage Dictionary defines intention as “an aim that guides action”. A kitchen is for cooking, not storing the car. Client appointments are for providing your service, not planning your house cleaning. And a project needs your presence for completion.

Put simply, intention is aligning with what you want.

Intention is a powerful tool for simplifying. It helps you maintain focus and stay true to your purpose. It weaves through your goals and reflects your desires. You can use it to continuously tap into your quality-of-life desires… perhaps those expressed in your Simplicity Statement. The more your thoughts and actions line up with your intention, the stronger it is.

When you have to deal with influences out of line from your intention, the energy for it is scattered and weakened. Regularly thinking “my work is difficult” is going to get in the way of an intention of attracting easy-going, responsible clients. Papers scattered all over the office will get in the way of the intention of a professional and orderly office.

Refining “an aim that guides action”
The word “aim” covers quite a bit of ground. It could be the function of a system, such as bookkeeping. It could be your understanding of a room’s purpose, such as a highly efficient office. It can also be the desire within an experience—for example, mutual respect in an upcoming meeting.

The word “action” includes any way—no matter how minor—that you express energy. This includes thoughts, words, and body language. You may not think it directly affects you or anyone else; you may not see an immediate result. However, everything you do has an effect on yourself and your surroundings.

Let’s look at intention in two work-related domains: space and systems. (I’ll look at the third domain, time, in the next article.) We’ll set a global intention of “managing all my work with ease”.

Space
Your surroundings have a huge influence on your effectiveness. When you set the intention for your work space, you effectively create a criterion of what does/not belong, and how well something works. Notice the difference between these scenarios:

Scenario #1: “The office is the room I work in.”
In this scenario, almost anything goes.

Scenario #2: “My office supports me in managing all my work with ease.”
In this scenario, not only do you gravitate towards an orderly office in which you can immediately put your fingers on what you need when you need it, you also pay attention to what will promote this intention. This may mean having extra printer toner cartridges on hand, placing the things you use frequently close to your desk, and removing non-office items from the room. By preventing an emergency trip to the office supply store, not having to get up every time you need a paper clip, and avoiding that dirty coffee mug sitting on the bookcase, you are minimizing distractions.

Systems
From simple to complicated, systems should help, not hinder. One of the simplest (and most overlooked!) ways of ensuring this is to clarify purpose. Notice the difference between these scenarios:

Scenario #1: “The inbox, without a clear purpose, has a stack of papers and files in it, some of which have been there for 3 or 4 months. I generally know what’s in it, and will eventually find something when needed. When I dig through, I find important stuff that needs to be dealt with.”
This scenario describes a tray with a bunch of stale papers in it that happens to be called an “inbox”.

Scenario #2: “The inbox, with the clear purpose of collecting incoming items only, is a short-term holding container that I empty 2-3 a times a week.”
This scenario describes a real inbox that helps get incoming items to the appropriate places. The fluidity of the inbox as a temporary collection container supports you in managing your work with ease.

These scenarios illustrate the idea that intention isn’t the action that causes change, it’s more like a culture that informs the actions that occur there. Just as an Italian restaurant would stand out in a Chinese village, a dysfunctional inbox stands out in the culture of a smooth flowing office.As you can see, Intention can be somewhat elusive. Determining an intention requires a combination of understanding your values, priorities, and desires. Often, these aren’t easy questions to answer. But once you do set a solid intention, it becomes a prominent background against which your actions play out. When your thoughts and actions directly support your desired end result, you set yourself up for success.

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Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.