Environmental Design

Hi, 

This has been a hard week for me. Which makes this newsletter even harder to write. Typically, when I am in the zone, I have an idea bouncing around my head, but this week I couldn’t seem to find my zone. 

There are a few reasons for this, the biggest one was that Casey was out of town. I don’t necessarily rely on her for my productivity, but I definitely play off her. The other was that I have had these weird calf spasms for a little over a week, so I have been afraid to run in case it exacerbates the issues. 

I think the latter issue has a higher impact on my writing, and the former has a larger impact on my overall quality of life. 

This week, I am going to talk about the latter. 

If you are new here, then you may not know that I am a huge fan of James Clear and Atomic Habits. The rest of you know.  

One of my favorite aspects of the Atomic Habits heuristic is the idea of environmental design. Yes, it is literal, but in my practice of this ideal I also use it as a figurative. I will give you an example: My apartment = literal environment. Running = figurative environment. My office = literal environment. Building Facebook ad campaigns = figurative environment. 

Your first thought may be that I am talking about the place I run when I talk about running, but I am not. I am referring to the head space that I inhabit while I do those tasks. When I go for a run, I have thoughts that I usually would not have if I didn’t run. The headspace of running is the environment where I have the kind of thoughts that help me write a newsletter, among other things. 

Whenever I have a week or so when I cannot run, I often struggle because the energy to have those thoughts is still there, I just can’t access the environment. 

I have been trying some things to fight back, going for walks around the block, swimming, and lifting. None of them have quite unlocked the same headspace, but they are a nice attempt. 

Here is a framework to work through if you feel off or you can’t quite access the types of thoughts that you normally do: 

Why does my brain feel weird? What do I want my brain to feel like? What environments (figurative and literal) do I normally inhabit when my brain feels the way I like? What are environments (figurative or literal) that I have access to inhabit that are similar to those? 

What I find is that by the end of those questions, I feel the way I wanted to feel just by asking myself questions and trying to actually figure out what is going on. 

Anyways, I hope you find this helpful, and I hope you spend your weekend in the literal and figurative environments that bring you rest and peace! 

Toodles, 

Kyle

P.S. A Sales guy who subscribed to my newsletter in hopes of selling me something unsubscribed, does that mean I won?

I should send him an email with this subject line: Bumping this to the top of your inbox