The trigger to change surrounds us
”There’s just one way to radically change your behaviour: radically change your environment.”
– B.J. Fogg
The third blog in our series on habits investigates the link between changing your environment and changing your behaviour. As much as we might think our intention drives our actions, in actuality we are very influenced by the environment we are in.
You feel hungry, you eat a bowl of porridge. There is an action that is led by intention. However, if you have bigger bowls in your pantry, you’re more likely to eat more. This small external environmental factor impacts your action. Environmental cues can hinder your goals greatly without you even being aware it’s happening.
So how do you use your environment to aid your habit sticking? You need to avoid tempting situations where you could break the new habit. This is different to motivation or willpower. This is about changing your environment so you don’t even have the option to make a choice that is detrimental to your goals.
As it turned out, people with high levels of self-control are no better able to resist temptation than anyone else- instead they operate by avoiding temptations in the first place . Essentially, changing the environment can change your behaviour.
The good news is that changing your environment is often quite easy and requires only minor tweaks. You want to change your surroundings and choices so you are nudging yourself towards the path that achieves your goals. Essentially, that means that you want to make your unwanted behaviours as difficult as possible, and your desired behaviours very easy. For example, by blocking social networking websites, you can help yourself procrastinate less. By making organ donation opt out, where people automatically sign up as donors and have the option to take themselves off if they disapproved of the process, donation rates skyrocketed. By laying out your clothes for a run the night before, you will be more likely to exercise that following morning.
Take a moment and think about how you can shape the path to your desired behaviours so that they are as effortless as possible. Also consider how you can make your unwanted behaviours as hard as possible.
In trading, instead of trying to use willpower to not overtrade, or emotionally trade, take yourself out of the situation in which you have to make that decision, or create cues that will trigger good behaviour.
Here are three examples of simple changes to your trading environment that can help you change your behaviour:
· Remove yourself from the situation: Get up from your desk and go for a walk after 3 losers in a row, or get up to make a cup of tea after making multiple trading decisions.
· Avoid temptation: Don’t have trading app on your phone in the pub with other traders, or book coffee with a friend while NFP is getting announced to avoid trading the high volatility
· Choose optimal default options: Configure your trading platform to have limit orders as a default, making you more likely to avoid slippage, or set your stop loss and profit-take targets for each tradeto avoid emotional trading.
Begin by coming up with your own three quick changes that are relevant to you, and track the results. Look at your trading history and see what days and what times of the day are you performing best. Think about how your environment is during those times of strength, and seek to replicate it. Similarly, study undisciplined trades at the end of every day, to start identifying better your triggers, then you can build in the specific environmental changes.
Making changes to your environment is a simple way to effectively stay on course with a habit. It makes it easier to do what's right without having to think about self control or staying motivated. If you set up your surroundings so that making the best decisions comes easily, then you can set yourself up to practice better habits in your trading.
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