This week we’ll delve into the interesting topic of intelligent environment design: the practice of making good actions easy and bad actions hard. 

In general, the Big Five primitive emotions drive us to take bad actions, while the Great Five positive emotions drive us to take good actions. 

Thus, we’ll construct intelligent environments for each pairing of the Big Five and the Great Five, starting with Craving and Inspiration. 

Craving

Craving comes in many different shapes and sizes, but its most challenging form is the one responsible for the global obesity epidemic. 

The core action we want to prevent is the act of stuffing our faces with hyper-palatable nutrient-free foods. So, let’s start with a simple question: how can I maximize the friction involved in this self-destructive action?

The simplest solution is to never allow these foods into your home. Thus, if Craving hits, you’ll have to go all the way to the store just for one little calorie bomb. This puts Craving up against Sloth in a fight it will often lose. 

Another fight that Craving will often lose is one against Ego. Try making a deal with your accountability buddy that you can only buy something unhealthy after you have let them know why you need to do this. The “justification” for spending money on self-destruct foods is often so stupid and embarrassing that Ego sends Craving packing then and there.  

A similar philosophy can be followed to add friction to other varieties of Craving. For example, it’s best to avoid signing up to dedicated binge-watching platforms like Netflix. 

But I think you get the idea. The next time you get a self-destructive Craving, think of ways to maximize friction and take action right away. 

Inspiration

Minimizing negative actions is all about adding friction. So, naturally, maximizing positive actions is all about removing friction.  

As we discussed earlier, getting more inspiration in your life requires a healthy blend of knowledge and passion. Thus, your mission here is to remove any friction involved in gaining knowledge and doing things you’re passionate about. 

Making some kind of commitment to knowledge is a good place to start. Maybe you can sign up for a course or, if you’ve cemented your morning reading habit, invest in a couple of books. 

Getting yourself to actually practice your passion can be trickier, but the same principles apply. For example, I was losing touch with my music until I decided to move my piano and guitar into my living room. Following this friction-reducing move, I’ve played every day for the past 5 months! 

So, how can you tweak your environment to lure more Inspiration into your life? Systematically remove all friction from learning and practice and I guarantee you Inspiration will come 🙂

That’s it for today. Join me again tomorrow when we put Ego and Altruism through their paces.