For this reason, what you see can lead to a big shift in what you do.

Clear tells a story about the energy crisis of the 1970s, where Dutch researchers looked at energy usage in a suburb near Amsterdam. They found that some homeowners were using 30 percent less energy than their neighbors–despite the fact that the homes were of similar size.

So why did some owners use less electricity and others more?

Researchers found that homeowners who had the electrical meter in the main hallway of their house could easily observe and track their energy usage while others had the meter in their basement where they rarely checked their usage.

This example shows how a person’s behavior can be easily influenced by their environment, often times more than they consciously realize.

Clear then applies this lesson to everyday life.

It’s easy not to practice the guitar when it’s hidden in the closet.

It’s easy not to read a book when the bookshelf is in the guest room.

It’s easy not to take your vitamins when they are hidden in the back of the top shelf.

Once Clear learned this lesson, he set out to find ways to apply it to his daily life.

For instance, he used to buy apples because he wanted to eat more fruit. However, he stored the apples in the back of his fridge, but because they were out of sight, he often forgot about them. By the time he remembered about them, they had were already rotten.

So, Clear decided to take his own advice and redesigned his environment for success. He bought a large display bowl and placed it in the middle of the kitchen in the open where he could see the apples and easily grab one. This simple change led him from eating no apples all week to eating multiple apples a day!

Here are a few more ways people can redesign their environment for success:

If you want to practice playing guitar more often, place your guitar in the middle of your living room so it’s easier to start playing it.

If you want to drink more water, fill up a few water bottles or containers, and place them in common locations around your home.

If you want to read more books, keep a book on the nightstand near your bed so you can easily grab it and get through a few pages before going to sleep.

And for bad habits, you want to do the opposite and make things harder to do:

If you have trouble staying off your phone, leave it in the other room and turn off notifications.

If you’re wasting too much time watching television, move it to a room that you rarely go into, or better yet, sell it.

If you’re playing too many video games, unplug the console and put it in the closet after each time you play it so it’s harder to turn on next time.

“Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one,” Clear writes.

Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower every time you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment.

The goal of behavior change is to make cues for good habits obvious while making cues for bad habits invisible. That is the secret to self-control.

Book Review:

I’d put this book in the top 3 best productivity books I’ve ever read, it’s that good.

James Clear did an excellent job with this book. It’s an easy and entertaining book to read filled with personal stories as well as scientific studies. There’s a lot of information to absorb, but each chapter ends with a summary and important lessons are repeated throughout the book.

This will definitely be a book that I will be reading more than once, that’s how much value you’ll find in these pages. I’ve already started applying a few of Clear’s lessons to my life and started seeing small, but promising results.

If you’re looking for an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones (which is everyone), this book is for you. Read it, highlight it, take notes, and start applying the lessons to your life and achieve success that lasts.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

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