Environmental Control

The fastest way to change your behavior is to change your environment to make the behavior you want prioritized. And by environment I mean your physical environment — the stuff in your office, the TV on your wall, the city you live in - and your people environment — the people you spend time with, talk to, collaborate with, listen to on podcasts, or watch on tv. You’ve heard the saying that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with and I think that’s at least partially true.

Both environments — physical and people — are much easier to change than individual habits.

I had a “parent teacher conference” with the woman who runs the program my 18-month old son spends three hours a day in last week. She said she gave up years ago on trying to get the kids to do things individually — when it’s snack time, she rings a bell and sings a song. When it’s nap time, she turns off the lights. Environment drives the actions she wants the kids to take. Humans work well this way.

So, creating an environment where something is really likely to happen is the best way to change behavior.

If you want to get an ambitious CIT out over the next two weeks, set up the environment where it has to happen.

Maybe that’s people:

• Reach out to a founder or two in Tacklebox to see if they’d like to do a similar two-week sprint

• Tell your spouse or parents or friend that you’re running the test and that you’ll send them an update on it in two weeks

Environment:

• Set a meeting for two weeks away where everyone in the sprint will get 15 minutes to present their test

• Block off an hour each day where you go to a coffee shop and can only work on the test

I ran a marathon in 2018 by changing my environment — every morning, the first thing I did was put on running shoes. And 6 months later I ran a marathon.

What’s the environment that’ll make you do hard, ambitious things regularly? Can you create it?