Our environments can make our break our habits and goals. Have you ever considered your habits are products of your environment? How often have you caught yourself turning on the television simply because the remote is within reach or grabbing your phone to kill a few minutes between meetings or classes? Going a step further, our environments can dictate our morals and values. If you frequent places and messages which degrade moral values, you will begin to devalue them, too. Today, we’ll look at the ways changing your environment can make good habits easier, while making bad habits require more effort.
Why your environment matters
Consider how your surroundings influence your habits. If you leave the television remote within an arms reach of the sofa, you’ll likely watch television. If you leave your phone on the nightstand or near the bed, you’re likely to reach for it first thing in the morning or before bed. If you leave healthy foods in plain sight on the counter, you’re more likely to reach for them.
Our brains prioritize efficiency. Often this takes the form of doing whatever is easiest and presents itself. When we get home from work, we reach for the easy meal to prepare. There is nothing wrong with this tendency; being aware of it allows us to work with our natural tendencies instead of against them. By making our environment line up more closely with our ideal goals, we make productive habits automatic.
The fast food industry has perfected this. They provide quick meals and are easy to pick up on the way to wherever you’re going, making them a convenient option for most people. It’s why places like Chick-fil-a and Starbucks are so popular; they are quick and consistent, and a reliable choice for out-of-town travelers and locals alike. A similar assurance is what we want to create in our own surroundings and habits.
This could be as simple as setting out the materials and preparing food ahead of time, so your meals are quick and easy.
One way to narrow down options to make a room line up with your goals is to think about how you want to feel in that space. Are you there to relax, or to work? Are you wanting to read for leisure or study? Each of these will lend itself to a different setup. What habits are you wanting to cultivate, maintain, or change?
Concepts like hygge and lagom emphasize finding happiness in the simple, analog pleasures of life. Each encourages having margin of time so as not to rush throughout the day, reading a good book while dinner cooks, spending time playing board games, etc. The details, while not the focus, all come together in the interest of providing habitual happiness and calm. By creating a welcoming space for your hobbies, and relaxing, you increase the likelihood of actually relaxing.
If you leave a book in place of the remote, you are more likely to read than watch television. If you have a candle and blanket ready to go, you make the space more relaxing. If you prepare your gym bag the night before and set it by the door, you cut down on the decisions you have to make as you leave the house; all you have to do is pick up the bag. We can be easily swayed off course by our environments if we aren’t intentional about them. Make good habits easy to perform.
Why paper is the key to productive habits
A second way to make your environment line up with your goals is to journal. Journaling allows you to get ideas, frustrations, to-lists, and anything else out of your mind and onto the page. Our brains are remarkable at thinking and making connections, but not so great at remembering things reliably. For this reason, keeping a notebook or pad of paper handy can make a huge difference in staying on track with goals.
Journaling makes clearing your mind, and documenting important notes automatic. Writing daily- as simple as taking down notes or names of books, places, or people to look up – helps you to keep up with the information you encounter over the course of a day. It can serve as a document to revisit later for ideas or inspiration. Writing about your motivations for the goals and habits acts as a reminder for your own benefit about the direction you’re going and your reasons for choosing it.
This is also an excellent practice for relieving anxiety before bed. During this journaling session, write down notes on the day and any worries you have, along with possible solutions. Using the journal to work through situations and develop a plan helps to calm your mind before lying down, allowing you to resolve the worry and get to sleep.
“Never go to sleep without making a request of your subconscious.”
Thomas Edison
Reach for your journal first thing in the morning instead of your phone. Each night before going to sleep, Edison would meditate on a problem he needed to solve and allow his subconscious to work on the problem while he slept. When he awoke the following morning, he would write the solutions and potential answers that came to mind. Your brain doesn’t stop working while you sleep, it’s just in a different state, working to clear the brain and strengthen connections between older and newer material.
Additionally, keeping a notepad in the central areas of your living space allows you to easily jot down
A huge and common source of overwhelm is that we try to keep too much information in our minds at the same time. Write things down instead of trying to remember them.
Use your mind to think, not for memory recall.
Our brains are amazing at thinking. The problem is, when we fill them with things to remember, we don’t have room or energy to make decisions. When you’re trying to remember to thaw chicken for dinner, what time soccer practice is, and three upcoming deadlines for work, all at the same time, you don’t the capacity to think. Get the facts and reminders onto a page or note, so that there is room to think!
Taking this extra workload off your mind will free up energy to reason and weigh the decisions which pop up during the day.
Simple ways to do this are keeping a running list in the kitchen of groceries to pick up. I also have found keeping a notepad next to the bed extremely helpful because I can jot down ideas or things I’ve forgotten earlier in the day as I’m winding down.
Best practices for winding down
Lastly, consider making time to recharge.
Set a cut-off time for work each day. This is especially important if you work from home, but applies to messages and email, as well. It’s tempting to want to always be “on” when we have devices which allow for instant communication regardless of time or location. However, our minds and bodies are not designed to focus around the clock. We have to set time aside for rest and recovery. Having a shut down time ensures we get this much needed rest every night.
Having a shut down routine at the end of each work day helps with this process of ending work and starting leisure. The routine of clearing your work space, shutting down devices, and moving to a different area all work together.
Our minds do best when they associate a single place with a single activity. Sleep scientists recommend keeping work and other activities out of the bedroom because they build an association with activities other than sleeping, making it difficult to get or stay asleep. With this principle in mind, designate areas for work or leisure. Moving from the work space to a leisure space cues your mind to move from work to relaxing. It tells your mind when it’s time to relax or focus simply based on location.
You can also apply this to different notebooks, devices, etc. For example, you could work or study exclusively on your laptop, and allow your tablet to be a leisure device. Or read for leisure in a certain chair, and reserve studying for your desk or the kitchen table. This helps your mind to automatically begin to work on whatever that place represents.
Just like your mind associates your bed with sleep and cues your body to prepare for sleep when you get into bed, your mind will prepare to work at the desk, or relax in your favorite chair.
Shutting down electronics at the same time each night is helpful, as it keeps your environment calm overnight, allowing you to fully relax in the evening.
A massive influence on our days is how we end the day. I’ve already spoken here about the importance of a morning routine and keeping that routine even on the weekends. Having an evening routine makes the habit of getting up on time even easier.
Use your environment to help you wind down at night:
- Set your thermostat to start cooling down an hour before bed.
- Use softer light in the evening hours.
- Put away your electronics.
- Read or journal for that last hour before bed.
- Go to bed around the same time each night.
When you are in the habit of winding down and going to bed at the same time each night, you make it much easier to get up at the same time each morning and build routine into your life. Setting an alarm for when to turn off electronics or go to bed can be a useful practice in making sure these things happen on time.
Maintaining a supportive environment and steady routines are great ways to stay on track with creating profitable habits for the long-term.
