The person who is trying to build a new habit is usually trying to change their behavior in an environment that was designed for the old behavior. The environment wins almost every time.
Why environment beats willpower
Willpower is a finite resource. The research on this is consistent. The person who relies on willpower to maintain a new behavior will eventually encounter a moment when the willpower is depleted and the environment provides the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is the old behavior.
The environment is not finite. It is a set of conditions that persist regardless of the person’s current level of willpower. A person who has designed their environment to make the new behavior easy and the old behavior hard does not need to rely on willpower to maintain the new behavior. The environment does the work.
What environment design actually means
Environment design is not interior design. It is the deliberate arrangement of the conditions that surround a behavior to make the desired behavior easier and the undesired behavior harder. It can be as simple as putting the running shoes by the door or as complex as redesigning a workspace to eliminate the distractions that interrupt deep work.
The principle is the same in both cases. The behavior that is easy to start tends to be the behavior that gets started. The behavior that requires effort to initiate tends to be the behavior that gets postponed. Environment design is the practice of making the desired behavior the easy one.
The three levers of environment design
There are three levers that environment design uses to influence behavior. The first is proximity. The object or condition that is close at hand is more likely to be used than the object or condition that requires effort to access. The fruit bowl on the counter is eaten more than the fruit in the refrigerator. The book on the nightstand is read more than the book on the shelf.
The second lever is visibility. The behavior that is visible is more likely to be performed than the behavior that is out of sight. The workout equipment that is visible in the living space is used more than the workout equipment in the basement. The journal that is on the desk is written in more than the journal in the drawer.
The third lever is friction. The behavior that requires fewer steps to initiate is more likely to be initiated than the behavior that requires many steps. Reducing the friction of the desired behavior and increasing the friction of the undesired behavior is the most powerful lever in environment design.
What this means in practice
In practice, environment design for habit formation means auditing the current environment for the ways it makes the old behavior easy and the new behavior hard, and then making changes that reverse that relationship. The changes do not have to be large. They have to be in the right direction. The environment that makes the desired behavior slightly easier than the undesired behavior will, over time, produce the desired behavior consistently.
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