This post is in response to an article at HBR. The article at first read, actually seems very practicle and like good advice. In case you don’t go to the link and read the article (which I suggest), the gist is that in order to focus on top priorities, we need to control our environment to help us make the right choices. The author goes on to say that “discipline, willpower and self-control are unsustainable,” and he uses an example of someone trying to lose weight.
What really struck me though was not the article itself, but a comment in response to the article. here’s a snippet of the comment.
“The healthiest and most permanent form of change always occurs on the inside, not the outside. It is far better to learn how to choose a better response to our environment than it is to learn how to manipulate our environment to avoid having to choose.” Doesn’t that make the most sense?
Manipulating our environment and limiting our options to help us make better choices, can certainly help us move towards achieving our goals and key objectives, but this should be more like training wheels, not the vehicle itself. What happens if we lose control of the environment we’re in (which is inevitable)? If we haven’t dealt with the root cause or weakness that’s causing us to make bad choices, we could revert to those habits the moment our environment lends itself to those decisions.
