Shape Your Environment
Want to reduce stress, sharpen focus, and hit your goals faster? Shape your environment.
"Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior." I love this quote from James Clear in “Atomic Habits”. It speaks to how we craft our spaces (physical and digital) to impact almost anything: performance, rest, reducing tiggers, increasing focus, the list goes on.
Across neuroscience there’s strong agreement that environmental influencers shape our behaviors and habits more often than our intention.
How do we disrupt our default patterns and design environments that fuel success, not stress? Consider these hacks:
Increase Focus & Mental Clarity
🛠️ Hack: Keep your primary visual field uncluttered and spacious.
🧠 Neuroscience: The brain's attentional system gets overwhelmed by excessive visual stimuli, increasing cognitive load and stress hormones. A clear, organized field improves cognitive efficiency and emotional regulation.
💛 Action: Declutter workspaces; orient your desk toward open space if possible. Use minimalism as a cognitive tool, not just an aesthetic.
Calm the Nervous System
🛠️ Hack: Incorporate wide, panoramic views during breaks.
🧠 Neuroscience: Engaging peripheral vision reduces amygdala activity (fear/stress response) and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. It's a shortcut to rest.
💛 Action: Take micro-breaks looking out a window, across a room, or into open outdoor spaces. Even a chair by the window with a view becomes a “pause” space for rest moments.
💛💛 Bonus Action: Add plants, natural textures (wood, stone), or nature sounds. Small doses of biophilic design can lower cortisol levels, and they can act as visual cues for rest time.
Control Lighting
🛠️ Hack: Bright, blue-enriched light for performance; warm, dim light for rest.
🧠 Neuroscience: Blue light exposure boosts serotonin and dopamine, enhancing mood, motivation, and cognitive sharpness. Dim, amber light promotes melatonin production, aiding stress reduction and sleep cycles.
💛 Action: Use daylight bulbs or natural light for work hours. Shift to warmer, lower light in the evening to support circadian rhythm.
Temperature as a Lever
🛠️ Hack: Keep your workspace slightly cool (66-70°F is optimal for cognitive performance). Alternatively, warm, cozy environments signal safety and relaxation. Use this for rest zones, not high-performance areas.
🧠 Neuroscience: Cooler environments increase alertness by mildly activating the locus coeruleus, enhancing focus without overstimulating.
💛 Action: Use layering to fine-tune temperature. Keep a light jacket or sweater nearby so you can adjust as needed to a cognitive "temp zone" without needing to change the temp for the entire room.
Acoustic Design
🛠️ Hack: Control soundscapes intentionally — silence, white noise, or nature sounds can all modulate brain function.
🧠 Neuroscience: Continuous, low-level noise (white, brown, pink noise) enhances focus by masking unpredictable distractions. Natural sounds promote alpha brainwaves, linked to calm creativity.
💛 Action: Use noise-canceling headphones for high-performance time. For stress relief and rest, play nature soundtracks or gentle ambient tones during breaks.
Scent Triggers
🛠️ Hack: Use targeted scents to prime desired brain states.
🧠 Neuroscience: The olfactory system is wired directly to the limbic brain (emotion, memory, arousal), making scent one of the fastest state-changers.
💛 Action: Use scent to signal transitions (eg, peppermint or rosemary to signal time for increased alertness, performance, task-switching agility, or lavender for relaxation and stress buffering. Your brain links scent to mental state faster than you expect. This can be a powerful tool if you struggle to transition from tasks.
🎯 High-Performance Bonus Hacks
💡Micro-environment mastery: Your car, your bag, your phone background - treat these as high-performance spaces, not afterthoughts. They influence your mindset more than you realize.
💡Digital declutter: Unfollow draining social accounts. Curate your feed like your physical space. THINK - if it’s not true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, or inspires kindness, do you really need it in your life?
💡Rest cues: Place reminders or objects for rest in your spaces. This will help you transition to recharge when needed, not burnout.
Your brain loves predictability paired with novelty. Establish small, repetitive environmental routines that signal “this is a high-performance or rest moment.”
Environment isn’t just where you function. It’s a mirror of your standards, energy, and vision. Upgrade your surroundings, and your performance follows 💪.
