Control Your Environment

In a recent interview with Leo Babauta, Tim Ferriss makes the interesting observation that it is easier to control your environment than to control your behavior. This has interesting implications for all those new year's resolutions that are probably already starting to weaken by now: they often involve trying to change or control behavior, which is hard to do, and so they fail.

How might it look to control an environment instead of a behavior?

• Diet: Clear all dessert out of the house (control the environment) instead of trying to control your impulse to eat the chocolate cookie dough ice cream sitting in the freezer.
• Time management: if web surfing takes away a lot of your productive time, try not even opening your web browser (control your computing environment) unless you absolutely need to check something for the project you are working on.
• Exercise: try parking in the most distant parking lot everywhere you go (control your environment), which will force you to walk more. It may not train you for a marathon, but this simple practice will certainly get you moving more.
• Attention management: if you've resolved to spend more time with a partner, kids, or other loved one, make a house rule: no electronics (Blackberries, cell phones, landline phones, Nintendos, etc.) at the dinner table, and everyone has to sit down to eat. This controlled environment will force you to converse with those around you for at least the time it takes you to eat, and thus you can avoid the modern affliction of being "home alone together" (because everyone is in their own separate electronic universe).

Are you struggling to keep up a resolution? Think about how controlling the environment around you might boost your chances of success in changing your behavior.