Perhaps no space has had more thought put into its design than a retail store. A retail store’s layout is central to its success. Every inch matters and that’s why entire fields of study have been devoted to their design.
Floor plans and end caps are meticulously thought out. Signage is strategically placed. Have you ever noticed how a store’s private label products are packaged almost identically to brand names? Then they are placed right next to the brands and marked at a slight discount. None of this is by accident.
Human behavior dictates a retail store. Most stores start with what’s known as a “decompression zone” at their entrance. This helps tell customers what the store is about. It also helps them differentiate the store from the outside or wherever they just walked in from. Most people naturally turn to the right once inside a store. Stores make good use of the space to the right of their entrance. Retailers will also place their most purchased items in the back of the store so you have to walk by everything else on your way to get them. These are just a few ways retailers leverage natural human tendencies to sell more stuff.
Your design
Does your healthy lifestyle have the same thought and effort put into its design? Consider your food pantry for example. How similar is it to a checkout aisle at a grocery store? A checkout aisle knows you are going to be stalled there for a few minutes. So that’s where they put the impulse products like gum, candy bars, magazines, water, soda, etc. They are trying to catch you in the moment and get you to make a snap decision. Do you have a bunch of impulse foods like chips or sweets in your pantry at home? How easy is it for you to mindlessly indulge? If you don’t want to give up impulse foods consider keeping them in a less visible or less convenient spot.
Similarly, is your workout routine designed for ease and to promote consistency? People often talk about getting to the gym. How easy is it to get to your gym? If you have a 30 minute commute one way, 10 minutes to get ready, a 45 minute workout, 5 minutes to leave and then another 30 minutes to drive home you’re looking at 2 hours of time. Do you have a back-up exercise plan for when you don’t have those 2 hours for the gym?
Not all workouts need to be super long or super vigorous. Something is always better than nothing. For example, a Gold Arrow Fitness advanced HIIT workout only takes 25 minutes and can be done anywhere with a cell phone. Having workouts like this in your repertoire allows you to stay consistent under different sets of circumstances.
How to design
The best way to design a healthy lifestyle is to identify structure in your environment. Think of the spaces you’re in like a retailer would think of their store space. What behaviors do you want to perform more of and less of? Do you want to watch less Netflix? Maybe having the TV as the focal point of your living room isn’t a great idea. Or maybe that TV in your bedroom with a remote on your night stand isn’t the best idea either. Add friction. This means do something like keep the remotes in another room so you have to get up to turn the TV on or go get the remote. Unplug your TV so if you really want to watch it you have to plug it in. These little design tips, although minor, will almost guarantee you spend less time watching Netflix.
I personally love bananas. We keep them in a 2 tier fruit stand in our kitchen. We can’t keep enough bananas in the house. But when we did some work on our kitchen and had to move the fruit stand it seemed like we were throwing out bananas left and right. Just the simple change of not having the bananas visible in our kitchen drastically reduced how many we consumed. If you want to eat more of something literally put it right in front of your face. Move the beer out of that eye level space in your fridge and replace it with some broccoli. Take the fake fruit out of the fruit bowl on your kitchen island, replace it with real fruit and eat the heck out of it!
Give it time
It almost sounds too simple but luckily for us it really is. Over time these small changes will add up and you will start to see a payoff from these subtle changes to your environment. Warren Buffet always says “time is the friend of a good business and is the enemy of a bad business.” Similarly, time is the friend of a good environmental design. Just make small changes here and there and let time do the work!
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