Architecture shapes decisions. Design your environment to influence behaviour and outcomes positively. EnviroHacking. (Environment + hacking)
Our environments shape our lives in ways we often overlook. From the moment we step into a grocery store, sit at our desks, or relax at home, the spaces we inhabit subtly influence our behaviours, decisions, and overall well-being. This idea forms the foundation of EnviroHacking, the practice of intentionally designing and tailoring environments to promote physical and mental health. By blending insights from psychology, neuroscience, and evidence-based design, EnviroHacking empowers us to create spaces that work for us rather than against us. Whether enhancing focus, reducing stress, or improving recovery, this approach demonstrates that by “hacking” our surroundings, we can unlock our full potential for healthier, happier, and more successful lives.
It’s a Saturday morning. To your dismay, you realise you’re fresh out of your favourite morning coffee brew. It’s still early, so you decide to make a quick dash to the grocery store and, while there, pick up a few other essentials. Hurriedly, you scribble down a list. “This won’t take long,” you think to yourself. There will still be plenty of time to enjoy your favourite morning brew on the patio before the day gets busy. However, more than two hours later, you return home slightly agitated, with an additional bag of unplanned items, and to your absolute horror, you also discover that you somehow forgot to buy the ground coffee beans.
What happened?
The reality is that while the average adult makes around 35,000 decisions each day, most of these decisions are heavily influenced by the environment we place ourselves in. Every physical space and every digital space we interact with daily impacts what we do and how we do it. The concept is simple: while you may have a plan, every grocery store, retail shop, restaurant, and even every app or interface on your phone also has a plan for you. They are designed to capture your maximum attention, time, and money. While none of these hold a gun to your head, all of them are subtly playing with your mind. Their primary aim is to leverage environmental coercion to take maximum advantage of your predictable human behaviours.
Our surroundings play a far greater role in shaping our decisions, behaviours, and well-being than we often realise. From the grocery store layout that influences what we buy to the design of our homes, offices, and schools, every environment subtly guides our actions and outcomes. This concept lies at the heart of EnviroHacking, the conscious act of shaping our built environment to enhance physical and mental well-being. By blending insights from psychology, neuroscience, and evidence-based design, EnviroHacking empowers us to create spaces that actively support healthier, happier, and more successful lives.
Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University, explains:
"The environment we put ourselves in matters much more than we realise. The key to better decisions isn’t sheer willpower, it’s designing spaces that guide us toward success."
This highlights the power of thoughtfully crafted environments to influence our choices and outcomes in profound ways.
All is not lost, however. There is a concept called choice architecture, which is the idea that we can influence our decisions by actively choosing the environments we place ourselves in. In essence, we are all the choice architects of our own environments. Ariely describes this concept beautifully:
“Imagine I came every morning to your office, and I layered your desk with fresh doughnuts and croissants. What are the odds that at the end of the year you'll be as trim and healthy as you are right now? Our ability to make decisions is not in resisting the doughnuts when they're there. It's about deciding not to have doughnuts on the desk in the first place. And this is the strength and the importance of choice architecture, that the environment that we put people in matters a great, great deal, much more than we understand.”
The data supporting this is overwhelming. As early as 1984, Roger Ulrich, a pioneer in evidence-based healthcare design, conducted a ground breaking study on the recovery of patients post-gallbladder surgery. He found that patients with a view of nature consistently had quicker recovery times and shorter hospital stays compared to those facing a brick wall.
This concept, by extension, applies to all the spaces where we spend our time. Considering that, on average, we spend 90% of our time indoors, the spaces we choose to inhabit, our homes, offices, schools, and shops, matter a great deal. Each one directly affects the way we feel, how we behave, and ultimately, how happy, healthy, or successful we become.
We often blame failure on a lack of talent, willpower, or discipline and attribute success to natural gifts, hard work, or effort. While these things are important, recent studies show that motivation and talent have been somewhat overvalued.
In reality, our environment often plays a far greater role than we realise. With advancements in technology, neuroscience, and psychological research, we now have a clearer understanding of the kinds of environments that stimulate us positively or negatively.
To that end, if we want to afford ourselves a greater chance of success, health, or happiness, we can now reverse-engineer these findings and customise our surroundings in ways that trigger and stimulate our most desired outcomes. This is where EnviroHacking comes into play, "hacking" our environments in the same way we think about hacking a computer or biohacking our bodies for improved physical and emotional results.
There are countless examples of how our environments work for us, or against us, in surprising and often unnoticed ways. The next article, where we will explore real-world examples that illustrate how our environments influence us and how EnviroHacking can be applied effectively to help us achieve our goals.
Information Reference Index:
Choice Architecture and Behavioural Design
Nature’s Impact on Health: Roger Ulrich’s Groundbreaking Study
The Role of Environmental Psychology in Design
NeuroArchitecture: How Environments Influence the Brain
EnviroHacking for Physical and Mental Well-Being
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