Design your environment, Reach your goals

A physical principle that I have found most useful and thought-provoking is the idea of ‘activation energy’. Activation Energy refers to ‘the minimum amount of energy required to undergo a reaction’. You can decrease the amount of activation energy required for a reaction by using a catalyst.

I have applied this principle for the past few years to get ‘motivated’ to do the things I need to get done and be more productive in my daily life. I have substituted the need for motivation with the need for activation energy. We only need motivation to do things that require energy (endothermic reaction) where there is some sort of ‘input’ required form us. The activation energy mental model works something like this:

‘I don’t the motivation to workout today ’

VS

‘I don’t have the activation energy. to workout today ’

Motivation is often out of our control but thinking in terms of energy puts the ability/motive to carry out a task back in our hands. The beginning of the reaction is the thought of doing something and it ends in either action or inaction. The missing part of the puzzle is the activation energy required to go from thought to action. Therefore, in order to get from where we are to where we want to be, we need to decrease the amount of activation energy required to do the things we want to do. If the activation energy is too high, we will not be able to overcome the ‘energy barrier’ consistently and inaction will be our inevitable end.

The most effective way to mitigate the effect of the energy barrier is to use catalysts to reduce the activation energy to a point where the action becomes more viable than inaction. A powerful catalyst is your environment. Your environment is the single most important factor that determines what you do and what you don’t do. Fortunately, we control most of our environment and we can mould our environment in order to enhance our ability to do the things we most want or need to be doing at any time.

• Put gym clothes next to your bed before sleeping so as soon as you wake up, your environment is telling you that you need to go to the gym
• Decorate your desk and keep it organised so that you have a pleasant workspace, encouraging you to spend more time working
• Invest in a good keyboard to provide a more pleasure-able typing experience to make you want to write more

These are small examples of how you can manage your environment so that the most convenient thing to do is simultaneously the thing you most want to do. Remember, the pain of inaction has to become greater than the pain of action. The lower you can make the ‘activation energy’ required for action, the most likely you are to perform that action.

Don’t seek motivation, design your environment so that it provides you with motivation without you knowing it.