The blog

I have made the great­est changes and improve­ments in my struc­ture in con­junc­tion with chang­ing offices or even jobs. When every­thing is new any­way, chang­ing a habit does not feel like such a dras­tic change.

When I meet par­tic­i­pants at my cours­es who recent­ly start­ed at a new job, I usu­al­ly con­grat­u­late them. Few have a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty to make changes in their rou­tines as they do.

But, we lead an ordi­nary life between these types of larg­er changes. And we want to improve our struc­ture then as well. Some­times a change comes easy, and some­times not. When you have repeat­ed­ly tried to become more struc­tured but failed again and again, it is time for more rad­i­cal mea­sures to be taken.

It is ingrained in the walls
Cog­ni­tion sci­en­tists say that we remem­ber things eas­i­er in the envi­ron­ment where we first learned them. For instance, stu­dents tend to get high­er results on exams when they are held in the same lec­ture hall where the stu­dents were taught. It turns out that small details in the envi­ron­ment and the phys­i­cal space work as ​“mem­o­ry-trig­gers” even if we are not con­scious of this mechanism.

The researcher David Neal at the Depart­ment for Psy­chol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty says that when we do things we do very often, as habits and rou­tines, we almost give the con­trol of what we do to the envi­ron­ment we are in. This espe­cial­ly goes for tasks we tend to do in the same place. We do as we do when at work, since ​“it is how we do things at work”. When we get back from a meet­ing and have a bunch of papers in our hand, we place it to the left on the desk before we sit down since that is what we usu­al­ly do when we return from a meeting.

It seems smart to cre­ate rou­tines out of many things we do dai­ly since they then hap­pen almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly and we then have more ener­gy for work­ing con­cen­trat­ed on more demand­ing and impor­tant tasks.
The beau­ty of habits and rou­tines is that we can design them in such a way that they ben­e­fit us optimally.

Neal has dis­cov­ered that when we want to change the habits we repeat most, which are so high­ly influ­enced by our envi­ron­ment, it is the envi­ron­ment we should focus on chang­ing (and hence enabling our­selves to estab­lish the new habit easier).

The out­er alter­na­tion inspires the inner change
Hence, if you deter­mine that you want to work in a more struc­tured man­ner than you pre­vi­ous­ly have, for instance due to get­ting an idea for a change you want to make from read­ing Done!, make a change in the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment you usu­al­ly per­form the task in.

Do this

1. Decide what work-relat­ed habit you cur­rent­ly have which you would like to some­how change.


2. Make it clear to your­self how you would like to do what you do today dif­fer­ent­ly. You could draw it out as a process, for­mu­late it in terms of ​“When I …, I would like to from now on do … instead”, or you could write it on a note as a reminder to yourself.


3. Think of a way to change the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment and mak­ing it dif­fer­ent from how it usu­al­ly is. For example:
   • Get anoth­er type of pen to write with
   • Change the place­ment of the speak­ers on the desk
   • Cre­ate an emp­ty space around your screen
   • Rearrange your bookshelves
   • Turn your desk so that it faces the oth­er direction
   • Ask your col­leagues at the week­ly meet­ing who would want to switch office with you. ​“I need to refine my way of work­ing and I will be able to do this eas­i­er if I change my work­ing envi­ron­ment.” The col­league who is will­ing to switch with you might also ben­e­fit from mov­ing and hence it is a win-win situation.
   • If you have a flex-office, choose to work in a dif­fer­ent work-space from what you ordi­nar­i­ly work in.
   • Change the com­put­er desk­top wall­pa­per and emp­ty it of icons you do not use
   • Remove the vis­i­tors-table and –chairs which you do not use any­way oth­er than to put piles of paper on them
   • Choose to dri­ve a dif­fer­ent route to work from now on
   • Put your phone in the trunk when you are dri­ving so that it is not eas­i­ly avail­able and hence tempt­ing you to text, check Face­book or your e‑mail
   • If your entire office is about to move to a dif­fer­ent loca­tion soon, take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to make changes in your habits


4. From now on, do the task/​procedure/​process in the new way you have invented.


5. If you fall back into your old habits, think of more things in your phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment which you can change and start over.

Eas­i­er to estab­lish and eas­i­er to maintain
If you make alter­ations in the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment in con­junc­tion with chang­ing a work­ing method, it will be eas­i­er to estab­lish the new habits and then eas­i­er to main­tain them as well. The improve­ment in your struc­ture will not be as stren­u­ous as it oth­er­wise might be and it will be more dif­fi­cult to fall back into old tracks again.

What is your method?
What changes could you make in your phys­i­cal sur­round­ings which would make it eas­i­er for you to estab­lish new habits? Do tell us. Write a comment!