How to Set Up Your Environment for Success According to Science
When it comes to getting things done, achieving your goals, and reaching higher success in life, most of us believe that we are going to need the motivation, the willpower, the network, and some luck. But research has shown otherwise.
Anne Thorndike is a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. She believed that she could improve the eating habits of the hospital staff and visitors through setting up the environment, without changing their willpower and motivation.
She came up with a study called “choice architecture” and implemented her plan with her colleagues in the hospital cafeteria. They decided to start by changing how drinks were placed in the cafeteria.
First, the refrigerators next to the cashier only filled with soda, so Thorndike and her team added drinking water into it. And next, the team added baskets of bottled water next to food stations throughout the cafeteria.
After 3 months, the number of soda sales dropped by 11.4% and the sales of bottled water increased by 25.8%.
Thorndike and her team then made similar adjustments with the food in the cafeteria, without telling anyone eating there. Guess what, they saw similar results. And this was how Thorndike and her team changed the eating behaviors in the hospital cafeteria.
This explains how our environment and surrounding play an important part in determining who we are.
We are often affected by our surroundings and environment, but the problem is that most people are not aware of it.
Your environment plays a big role in shaping your lives more than you think.
Let me ask you a question. If you are required to read a book and then present what you have learned from the book on stage, where do you prefer to read the book?
1. Do you prefer to read the book in a quiet and cozy library?
2. Or do you prefer to read the book in a noisy and crowded wet market?
The answer is clear. Your environment affects your mood, and hence, it affects your life.
Just like how Anne Thorndike and her team changed the eating behaviors of the people who eat in the hospital cafeteria, you too, can set up your environment and leverage it to win in life.
In other words, you want to set yourself up to win. Here are a couple of tips on how you can do that…
1. Make Things Easy and Convenient
When Thorndike and her team added more bottled water and placed them in convenient locations, people tend to choose them over soda. Why? When something is convenient, we are more likely to do it.
For instance, if you want to build your arm muscle, put the dumbbells somewhere convenient to you. So that you can easily reach it and do some weightlifting.
When a behavior is visible and convenient, it lowers your resistance to perform it. You will tend to snack more if the snacks are easily accessible and placed in a visible location like on top of the kitchen table.
If you want to floss your teeth, place the floss next to your toothbrush. This way, every morning right after you brush your teeth, you will see the floss as it is visible to you, and you have made it easy to do floss.
Lower the resistance and make a task or habit easy to perform, and you are more likely to do it.
2. Make Things Difficult and Complicated
On the contrary, when something is difficult and complicated, you are less likely to do it. Just like if you want to quit smoking, keep the lighter away. Store your cigarette in the drawer and lock it. And then put the key in another drawer.
When things become less convenient and difficult to carry out, you increase the resistance to doing it.
Think about hitting the gym. If the gym is far away from your work and home, and located in a congested area, trust me, unless you have strong motivation and willpower, you will never stick to your plan to hit the gym.
If you want to get rid of the habit of constantly checking social media like Facebook on your phone, just get rid of the App from your phone. This way, you can only access it either from your computer or using a web browser on your phone.
And every time you open a web browser and visit Facebook, make sure you are required to key in your email and password to log in. Make it difficult and complicated by adding extra steps. And you will lose interest to check Facebook.
3. Create External Triggers
External triggers are powerful. They remind you of what you need to do. For example, when you smell the fried chicken, you become hungry and wanted to eat. That’s because the smell is a trigger to remind you that you’re hungry or you need to eat.
Similarly, when you create a vision board, you see all the pictures you want on the board, they remind you of what you want to accomplish and inspire you to take action. This is how a vision board works.
Just like the flossing example I shared above. When the floss is visible, it works as an external trigger to remind you to floss. The same goes for the dumbbell. When you see the dumbbell, your brain sends a signal to you telling you to lift weight and build muscles.
Therefore, figure out what kind of external triggers you can create and then leverage them to build the habits and behaviors you desire.
Conclusion
Do not underestimate how your environment and surrounding can impact your life, and thus, your success in everything you do. If you want to win in life, first, learn to set up a winning environment so that you are engineered for victories.
