- We don't often think about the physical environment
that we live in work in,
but it's probably something we should pay more attention to.
As James Clear says in Atomic Habits,
"environment is the invisible hand
"that shapes human behaviour."
And although our internal motivation
and discipline is important,
ultimately, it's the environment that surround us
that most determines whether we'll find it easy or hard
to build and maintain the habits that will help us
live happier, healthier, more productive lives.
Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali,
I'm a doctor working in the UK,
and today we're talking about environment design,
because whether we're at home or at school or at work,
the physical environment around us
has such a ridiculously big impact
on so many different things.
Like, intuitively, we think that
if we wanna be more productive,
or we wanna build a healthy habit
like eating healthily or playing a musical instrument,
or, in my case, trying to hench like Zac Efron.
Intuitively, we sorta think
that we need more motivation or discipline.
But actually, there's an easier way
to do all of those things,
and it's all about the power of friction.
I've got this pet theory that is entirely non-scientific,
but I think works reasonably well
if we want to be a productivity grease monkey,
and that is that friction
is the most powerful force in the universe.
And, unsurprisingly, environment design
is one of the best ways to leverage its power.
So, we can think of friction as the force of resistance
in the gap between intention and action.
Like, the intention is, I should practise the guitar,
and the action is actually practising the guitar,
but in between that we've got this friction,
and friction is what causes all of the problems.
So overall, if we wanna encourage good habits,
we should reduce friction,
and if we want to discourage bad habits,
we should increase friction.
So that's kinda the basic premise of environment design,
it's all really about increasing or decreasing friction
in intentional ways.
And for me, the biggest way that I've done that
in my life is sleep.
So back in the day, I used to make the terrible mistake
of taking my phone into bed with me.
I would lie awake for hours staring at screen
browsing Instagram or watching random YouTube videos
or, once in a blue moon,
maybe even replying to a message on Tinder.
But then, once I discovered
some of this environment design stuff
by reading Atomic Habits
and by reading Maththew Walker's Why We Sleep
which is a very good book,
I decided to start putting my phone across the room from me
so that I physically couldn't reach it,
and then suddenly, like magic, I started sleeping better
because, you know,
I wasn't wasting time on my phone before bed
and I didn't have this kind of blue light screen
glaring up at my eyes.
These days, when I sleep, the only thing I have next to me
is my Kindle Paperwhite on the bedside table,
and I have the brightness turned down to like 1%.
I've also organised my iPhone
around this principle of friction.
On the very first screen, the only apps that I've got
are the useful ones,
the ones that I would actually want to click on
if I opened my phone.
I have to go all the way to second screen
if I want, you know, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube,
Tinder, Bumble, Hinge all of that stuff.
And so when I unlock my phone,
the first thing I see on screen
is not the screen that has all the notifications on it,
it's the screen that has useful apps
like Notion and Draughts and Castro and Audible and Anki,
and, you know, apps that I actually want to be using
rather than the infinity pools
that I know I'm just gonna get distracted in.
Thirdly, this environment design stuff
has been really helpful for me in the realm of music.
So I've been dabbling with the guitar for the last few years
but I wanna make a concerted effort to get better at that.
But before, the problem used to be
that the guitar would be all the way across the room,
like, this is not a very big living room,
it's just an apartment,
but, it would be like on the other side of the room,
even it just being on the other side of the room
was just too much friction.
And so, after kinda re-reading Atomic Habits
for my book club video,
link in the video description and stuff.
After re-reading the book, I realised, actually,
I could just take my guitar,
and now I have it stationed on the sofa,
like literally leaning on the sofa,
so that, if I am, you know, in an unproductive slump
and I go sit on the sofa,
instead of taking out my phone
and then browsing Twitter or doing something like that,
it's just as easy for me to pick up the guitar
and start doing a little bit of practise.
So just that slight reduction of friction
by moving the default position of the guitar
has meant that I practise guitar for like half an hour a day
for the last few weeks ever since I started doing that.
And it was just that one small change
that made the difference.
Alternatively, if I do end up in a slump on the sofa,
one of the apps I have on my phone
is something that helps me get put of that slump,
and that is Brilliant, who are kindly sponsoring this video.
If you haven't heard, Brilliant is a fantastic platform
for maths, science, and computer science courses,
and they've got tonnes and tonnes of these
across loads of different subjects,
which are all very interactive.
So it's not like you're just sort of,
like watching a video kinda like this one,
it's like you're actually interacting with the stuff,
you're getting problems along the way.
And the courses that I'm kinda going through these days
are the computer science series.
So they've got the introduction to computer science,
the fundamentals of algorithms,
they've got some really good stuff
on neural networks and machine learning as well.
And even though I taught myself to code
when I was very young, I never quite understood
the fundamentals of computer science,
and I find that, for me, if I am in a bit of a slump,
I'll make myself a cup of tea or a cup of coffee
and I will sit on the sofa and just do for 15 or 20 minutes
one of the online courses on Brilliant
because it exercises my mind,
it gets me outta the slump, it's really cool.
If you'd like to continue lifelong learning
and sign up to these online courses,
check out Brilliant.org/Ali,
and the first 200 people to visit that link
will get 20% off their annual premium subscription.
So, yeah, when we internalise this idea
that friction is the most powerful force in the universe,
we can then use it to our advantage
to build good habits and break bad ones,
and that is what this book by James Clear,
Atomic Habits is all about.
You should read it.
If you can't be bothered to read it,
then check out the video linked over here,
which is my book club summary and discussion
of the highlights from this book.
You should check it out.
Thanks for watching, see you in the next video, buh-bye.