Default to Clarity

A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.

—ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

WHILE WE CAN’T ELIMINATE OUR DEFAULTS, WE CAN REPROGRAM them. If we want to improve our behavior, accomplish more of our goals, and experience greater joy and meaning in our lives, we need to learn to manage our defaults.

The good news is that the same biological tendencies that make us react without reasoning can be reprogrammed into forces for good.

Think of your default patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting as algorithms you’ve been programmed to run unconsciously in response to inputs from other people or the environment. We don’t think about moving our knee when the doctor hits it with a reflex hammer. It just moves. The same thing happens with your thoughts and actions. We receive some type of input from the world and then execute an algorithm that processes that input and automatically produces an output.

Many of the algorithms you’re running have been programmed into you by evolution, culture, ritual, your parents, and your community. Some of these algorithms help move you closer to what you want; others move you further away.

You unconsciously adopt the habits of the people you spend time with, and those people make it easier or harder for you to achieve progress toward what you want to achieve. The more time you spend with people, the more likely you start to think and act as they do.

Eventually, almost everyone loses the battle with willpower; it’s only a matter of time. Consider my parents. Neither of them smoked when they joined the armed forces, but it didn’t take long for them to follow the lead of their smoking coworkers. At first, they resisted, but as the days turned into weeks, the grind of constantly saying no wore them down. Decades later, quitting proved nearly impossible because everyone around them smoked. The very same force that encouraged them to start was now preventing them from stopping. They were only able to kick their habit when they changed their environment. They had to find new friends whose default behavior was their desired behavior.

That’s just how it goes sometimes when we’re forming or breaking habits. What may look like discipline often involves a carefully created environment to encourage certain behaviors. And what may look like poor choices is often just someone trying their best to use willpower and bumping up against their defaults. The people with the best defaults are typically the ones with the best environment. Sometimes it’s part of a deliberate strategy, and sometimes it’s just plain luck. Either way, it’s easier to align yourself with the right behavior when everyone else is already doing it.

The way to improve your defaults isn’t by willpower but by creating an intentional environment where your desired behavior becomes the default behavior.

Joining groups whose default behaviors are your desired behavior is an effective way to create an intentional environment. If you want to read more, join a book club. If you want to run more, join a running club. If you want to exercise more, hire a trainer. Your chosen environment, rather than your willpower alone, will help nudge you toward the best choices.

It’s easier said than done, though. Reprogramming a computer is simply a matter of rewriting lines of code, while reprogramming yourself is a longer and more involved process.