Design your Environment

Have you ever noticed that stores tend to place their products in the most obvious areas? You see sodas and snacks at the counter in supermarkets. In Ikea, you walk through a journey full of example rooms, from living rooms to the bedrooms, in a certain order. 

If you haven’t noticed that yet, go to one of your nearby stores and see where all the products are located. It surprises you how small changes in placings can alter your buying behavior. 

This, however, is common in the marketing world and when you understand this tactic you can immensely impact your habit behaviors. 

“The more obviously available a product or service is, the more likely you are to try it”

The most common form of change is external. So, your environment has a tremendous influence on you, your behavior and your personality.

Just like your 5 closest friends shape the way you are and will become. 

So, how can you design your environment?

James Clear explains in his book Atomic habits the four laws of behavior changes, which include the building blocks to create a habit. The first law is to make it obvious. By making the habit obvious, you make the cue more noticeable. 

If you haven’t read the book yet, I will strongly advise you to read the summary of atomic habits.

Our environment has a huge influence on making the cue visible or invisible. Unfortunately, the environment often fails to accomplish what you want. Rather, our environment tends to make it harder for us to follow a certain habit.

When the cue is subtle, you will not notice it and/or they are easily ignored. 

So, make the cue visible and obvious in your environment. It usually consists of multiple cues that are right in front of you.

Design your environment by filling your spaces with relationships. Think in terms of how you can interact with the surrounding spaces. 

Let’s say you want to read more books. The first thing you have to do is think about the spaces that you currently possess. 

So, you might have a bed, a couch, a desk and maybe a garden.

The next step is to place the books that you intend to read in your designated place. 

Suppose that you want to read the book on the couch. What you can do is place the book on your favorite seat on the couch. This will force you to acknowledge the book, making it visible to you whenever you are sitting on the couch.

If your current environment won’t let you change. You can always create a new environment or rearrange your current one. If you have limited space, then you should divide your room into activity zones.

There is, however, one thing that you should avoid when designing your environment. Don’t mix up one habit with another one. It usually ends up with one habit overpowering the other one.

When you don’t design your own environment, you will be assigned one.

 Others will design it for you. So, take back control and become the architect of your life.