Choice Architecture
Choice Architecture is a fancy term some medical doctors came up with for “changing the environment to improve behavior”.
Changing behavior is hard so instead, change the environment.
Alex Boase originally introduced me to this idea while we were in College at TCU. The worst part about the college party is the cleanup. He showed me that if you were to host a party, instead of trying to train people to throw away their cups when they’re done, change the environment by putting trash cans everywhere. People naturally want to do the right thing, so make the environment easier for them to do that.
James Clear also writes about this in his article “How to Stick With Good Habits Even When Your Willpower is Gone”. He advocates changing your environment to make it easier for you to keep and maintain your habits.
Guitar
I always found it difficult to find time to practice playing guitar. I used to keep them in a case in the closet or in the corner out of the way. In 2018, I improved the choice architecture of my office to make them more readily available, by purchasing some nice wall mounts and installing them on the wall in my office. Now I have my electric and acoustic guitars nicely mounted and highly visible! I find that I practice more often and it makes for a great show piece.
