Your environment can shape you more than you realize
A report on how I've changed my environment to become more capable and focused.
In the past few months, it’s been clearer to me than ever that it’s much easier to change my undesirable behaviors once I really understand them.
I’ve put some thought into making it easier for me to do the right thing, resulting in being much more productive and focused at work and feeling better in my body - my energy levels are now higher than ever. And it hasn’t been a long or a difficult process (so far!).
A big part of my improvement can be attributed to just being better at thinking. Nick Saraev’s wonderful course on thinking clearly was one of the most important sources that pushed me to make thoughtful changes to my defaults, resulting in great impact with little day-to-day effort.
Sleep optimization
I knew that sleep was the area with the easiest gains for me. I tend to naturally wake up early, but it’s not very difficult for me to stay awake in the evening, especially if there’s a particular interest that caught my attention that day that I need to consume enormous amounts of data about.
As we’ve been told millions of times before, getting too little sleep is horrible for your cognitive performance, but I’ve seen several pieces of content lately that gave me a new idea on how to combat staying up late. I don’t know why I’d never thought of it before, but I now have a bedtime alarm set for 10 PM and it’s been doing wonders.
The alarm helps in another way too. Quantity isn’t the only measure of sleep that matters. Schedule does too. If you let your body get used to the same bedtime and wake up hours, your circadian rhythm aligns in a way that lets you start your day rested and energized. It took me a while to get used to going to sleep consistently, but it has had a tangible effect on my wellbeing.
Phone hygiene
My transition from being a student to being someone who takes their work very seriously sadly didn’t include cutting off my constant use of social media.
My feeds did become more educational and less distracting naturally, but every scroll session still left me wishing I’d done something better with my already limited time.
The thing that helped me by far the most in getting my screen time down was going into my phone and changing some simple settings.
My setting changes:
- I turned off notifications for most apps (I kept them on for text messages and some other apps that could carry urgent notifications). This makes me check social media and my friends’ messages async instead of whenever they come, which helps me stay focused on the task at hand.
- I turned off the “suggested apps” I get on Android every time I pull up the apps menu. This one change probably saves me an hour a day. When I open the menu, I now have to search for the app that’s about to waste my time and that additional friction gets me to just put away my phone and go do something better.
Alongside changing the settings on my phone, I also just leave it just far enough away from me for it to be inconvenient to pick it up unless I have a clear aim with it.
Office environment
Alongside my phone, the other big source of distraction from work is my office. I work in an open office next to about 5 other people. We get along very well, which is great for morale, but it might be even worse for productivity than if we had hated each other. There’s someone talking nearly all the time. That can have massive detrimental effects on your ability to solve problems efficiently and I can feel it happening in real time.
I invested in a pair of noise-canceling headphones and I’ve been listening to not-too-interesting instrumental music while I work. I found that if even the instrumental music gets too engaging for me, a part of me keeps noticing the music and stops noticing what we’re trying to do.
Health
Since starting to work a lot more, physical activity has taken a bit of a backseat in my life. I grew a bit overweight and I stopped cycling a lot. Additionally, the one place where I could get quality food closed down, so I went through a period of eating unhealthy food every day. That didn’t have so much impact on my weight as it did on my general wellbeing. I was less energetic overall.
When I decided it was time for a change, I implemented the following:
- I started bringing in meal prep and quit restaurants as much as I can. It’s been a bumpy road with me forgetting to take my food into the office a couple of times, but even then I refrained from eating junk food and had a healthy snack from the store instead.
- I bought a walking pad and aim to do at least 1 hour of walking at work every day. I intend to raise that amount slowly.
- I made it a non-negotiable to hit 10,000 steps daily. I used to hit that every day without trying, but lately, that hasn’t been the case.
- I did everything that’s in my power to make it easy to go to the gym on the way to work every day. I carry my gym bag into my car in the evening and I set my gym as a favorite in my Google Maps so it’s always recommended when I get into my car.
My gym routine is much shorter than it used to be, but I’ve put it together to get the highest amount of impact I can squeeze into about 30 minutes each day.
These changes made my mood much more consistent and the way I feel in my body much better. I’m already seeing some results in my appearance too, which is very welcome.
Think about your defaults
It seems like a massive list of changes, but all this hasn’t really felt like a rigid set of rules that I have to have in my mind at any moment to follow. Instead, I put a lot of thought into making my default actions be the desirable ones. I installed friction to my most harmful behaviors and I applied some lube to the behaviors I approve of.
It has only been a few months since I started thinking about steering my actions in a thoughtful way, but I can feel myself becoming more capable each day. I encourage you to think about which defaults in your life you can adapt to make it easy to act more in line with what you think is good for you.