Designing your environment so the right habit wins

Your behaviour is mostly downstream of your environment. The energy bar on the kitchen counter gets eaten. The book on the nightstand gets read. The yoga mat in the cupboard gets ignored. The phone next to the bed gets scrolled.

The two-rule design system

1. Make the habit you want to do visible and one step away.
2. Make the habit you want to avoid invisible and several steps away.

Concrete examples

Want to read more

• Book on the pillow before you leave for work in the morning.
• TV remote in a drawer, not on the sofa.

Want to drink more water

• Filled bottle on your desk before you sit down.
• Glass next to the sink, fill on every passing.

Want to stop eating biscuits at 3 PM

• Don’t buy them. The fight is at the supermarket, not at the cupboard.
• Have fruit visible at desk-height.

Want to stop checking the phone in bed

• Charge it in another room.
• Buy an actual alarm clock, £12, problem solved.

Why this beats motivation

Motivation has to be deployed every single time. An environment change is deployed once and then runs in the background, every day, while you sleep. The leverage is enormous.