Design your surroundings to make good choices. Our environment dictates what we find easy, and therefore are more willing to do, as opposed to what we need to do. Take a look around yourself and see how many environmental cues there are which allow yourself to develop compared to those which limit progress. Our environment serves as a reference guide to how we should act and respond.
Meaning, If you wanted to practice the guitar more but found yourself binge-watching Youtube on the sofa, always have the guitar by the sofa, so as your mind naturally finds a way to procrastinate it is greeted by what used to look like a chore but is now just a grab away.
“If you want a certain outcome, you need an environment that gets you closer towards it” - Melissa Chu
Even if you set out to complete a task with the best of intentions, decision fatigue and the thought of extra effort usually restricts this. Those things which have become second nature, like brushing our teeth and locking the front door require little to no willpower, this can be the case with the most daunting tasks if our environment makes it out to be.
If you run a retail store, which section would you place a book on 'How to Solve the Rubik’s Cube?
Naturally, these guides would be placed in the book section. However, from a business perspective, putting the puzzles and books right beside one another made more sense and resulted in more sales as a result of the slight environmental shift.
The change may seem small initially, like, moving a book to your bed so you will read it. But these small changes add it and have the ability to provide life-changing systems. Forming that environment as early as possible is key, it’ll eventually be harder to pick the bad choice and you’ll thank yourself for it later.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is out power to choose our response” – Viktor Frankl
Final Thought: What have you done today that is story-worthy?
This can be from washing the dishes to travelling. If nothing comes to mind, work on that story-worthy moment tomorrow.
Have a great week!
- Abdullah.
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