Nudging: How to Effortlessly Change Your Habits

Shape your environment and then let your environment shape you.

If you walk into the men’s room at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, you’ll notice a funny detail — inside each urinal, there’s an image of a black housefly.

Why? Well, it turns out that men rarely pay much attention to where they aim. But when they have a target, their attention and accuracy is much better.

So much so that the urinal fly images reduces spillage in the men’s room by a whopping 80 percent!

That’s a remarkable result, and a great illustration of the power of “nudging”: small, simple, and inexpensive changes to the environment which increase the likelihood that people will make certain choices or behave in particular ways.

The beauty of nudging is that it allows you to make smarter decisions and take better actions without having to think about it.

You simply shape the surrounding environment, and then let the environment shape your behavior.

Here are some examples of how to use nudging to strengthen your fundamentals and cornerstones:

• If you want to sleep better, remove the TV from your bedroom and place a great book next to your bed.

• If you want to eat less, store away your big plates and serve yourself on salad plates instead.

• If you want to move more, place your work materials away from your desk so you have to walk a few feet to get them.

• If you want to do deep work, use an app like Freedom to block distracting websites.

• If you want to practice deep love, set up your phone so it goes into Do Not Disturb mode after 5 pm.

Often times, all you need is a slight nudge in the right direction, and the rest will take care of itself.

So, take a look at your environment, ask yourself: “How can I make good habits easy, and bad habits difficult?”