Upgrade your digital habits by changing your environment

- If you've ever heard personal trainers or diet experts talk about eating better, you might have heard that changing your environment would make a difference. They might advise put the cookie jar on a higher shelf, or, better yet, stop buying cookies. Without cookies or other unhealthy foods at home, we'll be less likely to eat them because who wants to go to the store just for some junk food? We've changed our environment, so let's use that to help us with our digital habits. Look around you now. How many devices are there? Most of us need one screen, and I'm guessing you're watching this through a screen. If you're not, then hello, future. However, if you have other screens around you or other apps or other tabs open, each of those is potentially using brain resources. Just the mere presence of a digital device, even if it's switched off and turned over, has a negative impact on our IQ and our EQ. So what can you do about it? I recommend having low tech rooms or unplug zones where you reduce the amount of screens. Here are a couple of examples. More than 80% of us sleep with our phones by our bedside. We might have the most amazing sleep hygiene, blackout blinds, lavender oil, et cetera. However, if your phone is by your bed, it's similar to being on a diet and having cookies by your bed. If you need to have it in the room, consider using sleep mode, which we'll talk about later. Now, you might think, "Easy, I'll remove the phone from the bedroom." This is a huge change, so introduce it slowly and swap it for something you like. If you get a basic alarm clock, you're likely punishing yourself and that habit won't stick. So think about a voice assist, a vibrating watch, or a sunrise alarm clock. Think of other parts of your day. Does the phone need to be next to the laptop when working or at the dining table when eating? Pause this video right now and make a list of the places you would like to have as a low or no tech zone. To make it actionable, maybe gamify it. For example, when having dinner with friends or family, put the phones in a box and the first person to touch their phone has to pay for the meal. Why not try that this weekend? That's behavior change at its most powerful right there, positive change rewarded socially. You could also try to reduce the amount of apps you have open on each device. To make this easier on your phone, you can put the most important apps on the home screen and move less important apps to the second or third screen, just like the cookie on the higher shelf. On your browser, limit the amount of tabs you have open. Reducing tabs help you focus. I use the free browser add-in xTab and limit my browser to five tabs, so I literally have to finish whatever I'm working on before opening something else. And now it's time to look at how to build a plan to enable this.