How a different environment creates better habits

Change your environment, change your habits

Change where you work if you want to form new habits.

I call this “the nomad life.” 

Change your workspace. This can mean going to a different space each day or on a regular basis. Or it can just mean picking a new regular space from where you typically work right now. 

If you work from home, start working in coffee shops. Or a bookstore. Go to the library. 

If funds are tight, just set up work in a different room of the house then you normally use. 

The key here is that you start a new habit with a new environment. 

Why?

The reason is simple. Our habits are largely driven by stimulus-response. That just means when a certain stimulus in your environment happens, you act a certain way. 

If this -> then that. 

When you first sip that coffee in the morning, you’ve trained yourself to read your emails. 

When you hit a task you don’t like, you start calling up YouTube.

When I see that Nacho Fries are back at Taco Bell, I find myself reaching for the car keys. 

You get the picture. 

The point is that a familiar environment is going to be filled with tons of triggers and lots of ways for you to steer yourself to old behaviors.

Can you teach an old dog?

This doesn’t mean that we’re not conscious of our behaviors or that we don’t have control over what we do. It just means that our brain’s fire off behaviors in response to environmental cues. 

The more you’re stuck in an old environment that triggers a bad habit, the harder it will be to form a new habit.

You can still control your behavior, but when you’re forming a new habit, you want to remove any friction that you can that could prevent you from forming that habit. 

Take yourself out of the old environment, and get in a new environment. When you want to form a new habit, get in a new environment.

Two-fold benefits

The benefits are two-fold, and they’re immediate. 

It boils down to this: you immediately get rid of bad triggers and you immediately introduce good triggers.

You get rid of bad triggers, because you remove yourself from the old environment. 

You introduce good triggers, because…you’re in a new environment. So when you start a new habit, your brain will associate the new behavior with your new environmental triggers. 

It’s that simple, because when you want to form a new habit, you need to remove friction. The distance between trying and failing and actually making a new habit successful can be very small.

Get rid of those small cues that may be keeping your brain from forming the habits you want.

What happens in Vegas…

It’s a cliche. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. 

Now, obviously Vegas trips imply a lot of craziness. Not the same thing we’re talking about. But there’s a point here. 

We act differently in new environments. 

Why do people read travel writing? Why are there so many stories about a journey? Why are so many of your own personal stories about a trip or a vacation?

Because when you’re out of your natural setting, you act differently. 

We all do.

Our thoughts, our habits, our ways of behaving are all conditioned by routine and our surroundings. When we shake that up…things change. 

It’s just how the mind works. It’s just how people work. It’s how you work. 

Put yourself out of your comfort zone, and you’re just gonna act…different.

Use it

Take that dynamic and use it. 

When you want to form a new work habit, think out what that habit looks like. Then, when you decide to start that habit, start it in a new environment.

Go to the coffee shop tomorrow. You like coffee. Get yourself pumped to have a latte. Talk to new people. 

Don’t want to do that? At the very least, work from a different part of the house. Set up shop in a different room. Find some way to make your surroundings different. Anybody can do it. You can do it.

And you can do it tomorrow.

Wait a minute

Haven’t I talked before about setting up your environment at home to support new habits?

Yes. I have. 

The fact is, environment is important. People are different and situations are different. You might find yourself in a situation where you need to improve your normal environment or you may need to change up your environment altogether. 

Both can be true. It depends on the person and it depends on the situation.

The upshot is, environment is crucial. It has a huge effect on your behavior, so you take your environment seriously if you want to create new habits. 

Different things work depending on the person and situation, but this is worth trying if you want to form a new habit right now.  

Work with Anthony and hit the rocket fuel 🚀button on your success!

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