Enemies of Clear Thinking pt.6
Default To Clarity
Today’s 2 Main Ideas
Your environment determines your behavior
Design your environment purposefully to control your behaviors
Your Environment Determines Your Behavior
During tenth grade, I was always busy with school, riding buses or the subway, walking in snow, and playing basketball. My days started with a bus ride to school at 7:15 in the morning and ended when I got home around 9:00 at night. I went from school to the gym to lift weights, then took the subway and walked to a different area of the city for basketball practice. After that, I'd head home, have dinner, do my homework, and sleep. Most of my homework was done on the subway, where I balanced my laptop and notebook on my knees like at a barbecue.
Thinking back, I don't know how I managed all that. To be honest, it was pretty tough. But I kept at it and even made the honor roll. Looking back, there's only one way I can explain how I did it.
Back in eighth grade, my school said they were starting a new program the next year called the IB-Program. They needed students to apply. This program would have a small group of 25 students who would take all their classes together. These classes were more challenging, with extra work.
Truthfully, I thought that sounded awful and I wanted no part of it. But I made the fortunate mistake of letting my mom hear about it before applications were due. She made me apply. She told me how important it was to surround myself with hard workers.
The class average on tests went from an 80 to a 90 or a 90 to a 98. We went from flexing how many beers we could drink to flexing how many hours we studied for a test.
Being surrounded by hard working, competitive students had a flywheel effect that made everybody work harder. The environment changed the people and the people changed the environment.
We all got better by being around one another.
Design Your Environment To Control Your Behavior
I saw my environment determine my behaviors. It was a huge lesson for me. I saw how much more I was capable of when I spent time with people whose default behavior was my desired behavior. By surrounding myself with people who expect a lot from themselves, dream big and compete with one another, those parts of me all grew.
I didn’t choose my environment based on the behaviors I wanted to adopt (my mom did). But since seeing that lesson play out, I’m much more aware of my environment and I avoid bad influences like the plague!
I always look to spend time with people whose default behaviors are my desired behaviors now (Clear Thinking,36). That works for picking up a good habit and especially for kicking a bad habit.
Another trick I learned to change my habits is to add friction to negative behaviors and reduce friction to positive behaviors.
I can’t wait to get into more actionable tactics to changing our defaults on Friday! We’ll be starting Part 2, Building Strength, after tomorrow’s reading break.
P.S. The reading break is intended to give you time to catch-up on reading you might have missed, to revisit a chapter you liked and to read my beautiful words on your screen one extra time!
Brains Gains
Is your environment encouraging positive behaviors or negative behaviors?
Pay attention to your environment today. Look for subtle or obvious ways you can change it to encourage desired behaviors. Comment or email me any ideas you have, I’m really curious to hear them!
Your Friend,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski