How to Optimize Your Daily Decisions

You might assume that humans buy products because of what they are, but the truth is that we often buy things because of where they are. For example, items on store shelves that are at eye level tend to be purchased more than items on less visible shelves.

Argument is this: If you design for default in your life, rather than accepting whatever is handed to you, then it will be easier to live a better life.

Design for Default

Although most of us have the freedom to make a wide range of choices at any given moment, we often make decisions based on the environment we find ourselves in.

Consider how your default decisions are designed throughout your personal and professional life. For example:

• If you sleep with your phone next to your bed, then checking social media and email as soon as you wake up is likely to be the default decision.
• If you walk into your living room and your couches and chairs all face the television, then watching television is likely to be the default decision.

Of course, defaults can be positive as well.

• If you keep a dumbbell next to your desk at work, then pumping out some quick curls is more likely to be the default decision.
• If you keep a water bottle with you throughout the day, then drinking water rather than soda is more likely to be the default decision.

How to Optimize Your Default Decisions

Here are a few strategies I have found useful when trying to design for default in my life:

• Simplicity
• Visual Cues
• Opt-Out vs. Opt-In

Designing for default comes down to a very simple premise: shift your environment so that the good behaviors are easier and the bad behaviors are harder.

Designed For You vs. Designed By You

Default choices are not inherently bad, but the entire world was not designed with your goals in mind. In fact, many companies have goals that directly compete with yours (a food company may want you to buy their bag of chips, while you want to lose weight). For this reason, you should be wary of accepting every default as if it is supposed to be the optimal choice.

I have found more success by living a life that I design rather than accepting the standard one that has been handed to me. Question everything. You need to alter, tweak, and shift your environment until it matches what you want out of life.

Yes, the world around you shapes your habits and choices, but there is something important to realize: someone had to shape that world in the first place. Now, that someone can be you.