Change Your Context, Change Yourself

In my last post, I wrote how good habits are so much more reliable over the long term than motivation, discipline and willpower in getting done more of what we should and less of what we shouldn’t. But there’s a bit of a Catch-22 in that approach: you need motivation, discipline and willpower to get through the initial difficult process of establishing a beneficial habit or breaking a bad one.

You can’t totally avoid the need for willpower, but fortunately you can make the path a little easier for yourself by paying attention to the context in which you perform the behavior.

Although it’s comforting to assume that we’re in control of our own actions and behaviors, our environment has far greater influence on our behavior than we think. In one study, researchers were able to get diners in a hospital cafeteria to drink 11% less soda and 25% more bottled water by simply changing where bottled water was placed.[1] I would bet that if you had asked someone why they bought a bottled water instead of their usual soda, they would give you a solid reason for it—and they would believe it, too.

A much more powerful demonstration of how the environment influences habits is described in Atomic Habits. During the Vietnam war, as many as 20% of American servicemen became addicted to heroin while there. Heroin is an immensely difficult drug habit to break, yet upon returning to the States, fully 99% of those addicts were able to break the habit! The difference was their environment had changed.[2]

Our environment affects our behavior in two ways. First, it can make it easier or harder to perform a specific behavior. If you have to walk somewhere to get that can of soda, you’re less likely to choose it than the water that is right in reach.

Second, our environment is full of cues that our minds may notice outside our conscious thought that trigger our behaviors. All habits are triggered by cues, so if we can remove or add cues we can weaken or fortify our habits.

You can fight against the influence that our environment has on your behavior by conscious effort, but that defeats the purpose, because it taxes your willpower and discipline. It’s better to make the upfront effort to redesign your environment so that it works for you and not against you.

First, make it easier to perform the behavior you want to turn into a habit, or harder for those habits you want to break. Arrange your materials and your workspace ahead of time so that you can get right to work. Lean thinkers call it 5S, and it’s a great practice to adopt in your personal work as well. In my own case, I want to write for a full hour every morning, and I’ve found it helpful to have my desk clean and my notes arranged in advance the evening before. (In fact, an end-of-day routine is what I call an enabling habit—one that’s relatively easy to establish and makes it easier to perform the more difficult habit.)

Turn off distractions such as incoming email notifications; put your phone somewhere that you won’t be tempted to check it every few minutes; put tempting foods out of sight—the small easy fixes you can make are all around you if you just take the time to look for them.

Also, think about your social environment. The old saying that “You become like the five people you spend most time with”, definitely applies to habits. For example, one study showed that participants who had a friend become obese were 57% more likely to become obese themselves! Your peer group is immensely important.

Second, take inventory of the cues that trigger unwanted behaviors and minimize or eliminate them If that’s not possible, try habit substitution. Use the cue that you can’t avoid to trigger a different, positive habit. That worked for me last year: I used to follow up may daily workout with my “recovery drink” (which comes in a little green bottle from Holland). Now, I meditate for a few minutes instead, and it has become a regular part of my day. That was a double win for me, and easily done.

Sometimes the hardest thing about starting a habit is remembering to do it. Your best antidote to forgetfulness is consistency, which is easy to achieve if you stick as closely as possible to a particular spot and a time for the activity. You might find it helpful at first to schedule “appointments” for yourself for the activity, but it will become automatic in a surprisingly short time if you stick with it.

Change your context first. Our environment shapes so much of what we do, but there’s no reason that we can’t in turn shape our own environment. We’re constantly told by the success gurus that we need to change ourselves if we want to change our lives. That may be true in the long run, but that’s a huge task. By changing the things around you, you make it easier to change the things inside you.

[1] James Clear, Atomic Habits, p. 108.

[2] Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch, p. 206.