Change in Context = Change in Results

The environment is more powerful than the will.

Witness the rate of failure for diets, New Year’s Resolutions, or any other attempted habit change in the lives of people around you. Are these failures of the will? Do people simple lack the character and drive to succeed? Perhaps. But there is ample evidence that the x-factor is not willpower. It seems changing the external environment sometimes works better than relying on raw will. Wray Herbert recently wrote about this in The Perils of Willpower:

[Northwestern University psychologist Loran Nordgren and colleagues] contacted about 50 smokers who were trying to quit through a smoking cessation program. All had gone without a smoke for at least three weeks, which means that their physical withdrawal cravings were past. The researchers began by giving the smokers a questionnaire to gauge their beliefs about their ability to control their impulses and withstand temptation. Then they asked them a series of questions about the steps they took to avoid being around cigarettes: Do you avoid people who smoke? Ask people not to smoke? Sneak an occasional drag? And so forth.

Four months later, they contacted the recovering smokers again to see how they were doing with their effort to quit. They expected that their beliefs would shape their risky behavior, which would in turn influence success or failure. And that’s precisely what they found. As reported in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science, quitters who were confident in their powers of self-restraint were more apt to hang around smokers and keep cigarettes around--and were also more likely to relapse. Those who felt weak and vulnerable had a higher rate of success.

Those who did not believe as strongly in their willpower changed their environment; that change, in turn, supported their change in behavior.

They are not alone. In many circumstances, changing the context of a decision improves the decision. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell offers several examples, including maestros of American orchestras. Gladwell says they began making less biased and more meritocratic hiring decisions when screens were introduced in audition halls. The screens removed the temptation (or tendency) to stereotype musicians based on gender, posture, or dress; audition evaluations became more accurate and pure.

In the “life hacks” movement, Merlin Mann and Danny O’Brien have used the term “useful landmines”--something you put in your path that makes it easier to succeed (or harder to give in) when trying to change a behavior. In 2005, Mann wrote about several such tricks suggested by Dr. Stephanie Burns:

You want to start carrying a bit of cash and not using your credit card.
Make it hard to do. Freeze your credit card in a block of ice.

You want to move more, your [sic] annoyed at your inactivity.
Make it easier to do. Take your TV remote to work and leave it there.

You want the habit of waking up 20 minutes earlier but keep pushing the alarm snooze.
Make it hard to stay in bed. Move the alarm, set the lights on a timer, set the TV on a timer.

In Ready For Anything producitivity guru David Allen refers to these kinds of modest environmental changes as the “a fundamental productivity gimmick,” which he refers to with the shorthand of “Put it in front of the door.” If you have something that you must take to work the next morning, the best place to put it the night before is right in front of the door. You can’t possibly miss it on your way out the next morning. He says the principle generalizes to other areas of life--putting goals, aspirations, and possible actions in front of the “door” of our awareness on a regular basis leads to accomplishment.

You may believe in willpower and self-reliance, but ask yourself how well you are doing in changing whatever habit you want to change or achieving whatever long-term goals you hold. If you struggle with these things--or simply want to make it easier--leverage your environment. Ask what you can add (or subtract) from your surroundings that might make it easier (or harder) to do what you should or shouldn’t. Who you are hanging out with who isn’t helping? Who should you pal around with that might help? Look for changes you can make to your context that turn the right thing to do into the easy thing to do.

And if you feel defensive about your willpower and ability to change--or feel uncomfortable being at the mercy of your environment--then remind yourself that you are the one who is taking control of that environment to reinforce your positive changes in a moment of weakness.

Monday, December 7, 2009