Motivation Is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More - my favourite lines from, 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear:

“Anne Thorndike, a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, had a crazy idea. She believed she could improve the eating habits of thousands of hospital staff and visitors without changing their willpower or motivation in the slightest way. In fact, she didn’t plan on talking to them at all.

Thorndike and her colleagues designed a six-month study to alter the ‘choice architecture’ of the hospital cafeteria. They started by changing how drinks were arranged in the room. Originally, the refrigerators located next to the cash registers in the cafeteria were filled with only soda. The researchers added water as an option to each one. Additionally, they placed baskets of bottled water next to the food stations throughout the room. Soda was still in the primary refrigerators, but water was not available at all drink locations.

Over the next three months, the number of soda sales at the hospital dropped by 11.4%. Meanwhile, sales of bottled water increased by 25.8%. They made similar adjustments - and saw similar results - with the food in the cafeteria. Nobody had said a word to anyone eating there.”

People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. If I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, I’ll pick up half a dozen and start eating, even if I hadn’t been thinking about them beforehand and didn’t necessarily feel hungry. Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.

Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. Despite our unique personalities, certain behaviors tend to arise again and again under certain environmental conditions. In church, people tend to talk in whispers. On a dark street, people act wary and guarded.

In 1936, psychologist Kurt Lewin wrote a simple equation that makes a powerful statement: Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment. It didn’t take long for Lewin’s equation to be tested in business. In 1952, the economist Hawkins Stern described a phenomenon he called “suggestion impulse buying”, which “is triggered when a shopper sees a product for the first time and visualises a need for it”. In other words, customers will occasionally buy products not because they want them but because of how they are presented to them. For example, items at eye level tend to be purchased more than those near the floor. For this reason, you’ll find expensive brand names featured in easy-to-reach locations on store shelves because they drive the most profit, while cheaper alternatives are tucked away in harder-to-reach spots.

However the good news is we don’t have to be the victim of our environment. We can also be the architect of it!

So how do we design our environment for success? Shall discuss the same in the next post.

#myreflections #anideaaday #environment