How to Make Smarter Decisions by Designing Your Defaults

90% of your daily decisions happen automatically, many shaped by environment. Thus, most decisions are a habit, not a deliberate choice. To make smarter choices, design smarter defaults. All you need to do is harness the power of defaults and shape the invisible defaults of your life.

Exercise More

Get a doorway chin up pull up bar and do a couple of pull-ups every time you enter or leave your bedroom

Lay out your workout clothes the night before and put them next to your bed. The moment you wake up, you’ll have everything ready to go
Always park your car a healthy distance from your destination
Take the stairs when you have a choice

Drink More Water

Have a bottle next to your bed so you get in the habit of drinking water immediately after waking up

Sleep Better

Put an alarm on your phone by default an hour before bedtime to remind you to begin your pre-bed ritual

At that time, leave your laptop and mobile phone in another room and physically unplug the TV
Leave a book at your bedside table within arm’s reach

Less Phone Time

Disable all notifications, except for your ringtone

Out of sight, out of mind
Move all apps to the second screen and keep your home screen empty
Set your phone to airplane mode an hour before going to bed and only disable it after completing your morning routine

Watch Less TV

Rearrange furniture so that if you want to watch TV you’ll need to move it

Do Defaults Save Lives?

Defaults are so powerful they save lives.

In organ donation, countries use one of two policies: Required “Opt-In”: people who want to be an organ donor must give explicit consent to doing so
Default “Opt-Out”: users are signed up as organ donors by default and need to require to opt-out
Countries with presumed consent policies have consistently higher numbers of transplants

Your “Golden Years” on Autopilot

Automatic enrollment: this means that employees are enrolled by default, forcing them to decide to opt-out in order to not contribute to retirement automatically

Now employees make smarter decisions by default
Participation in 401(k)’s skyrockets under these circumstances

Defaults to Make Smarter Decisions

If you plan your defaults, you make smarter decisions every time with little effort

Default decisions are everywhere
They are the settings that come out of the box, the selections you make on your computer by hitting enter, the assumptions that people make unless you object, the options available to you because you haven’t changed them
Defaults are powerful nudges as they require you to actively object for it not to work
Turn your automatic decisions into good ones and you will naturally make the right choice

The Power of Defaults

Your environment impacts your behavior – often without you even realizing it

In a continent where countries are very much alike, what could cause such a difference?
Initially, the researchers thought the difference in donations would be caused by the “big” reasons, such as religion and culture
But that wasn’t the case
Could the researchers explain the massive gap between similar countries with a single factor?

Reduce Mindless Internet Browsing

Go cold turkey on your phone and disable the browser app. On the iPhone, go into Settings, turn “Restrictions” on and then you can turn off Safari.

Disable Chrome in App Settings
On the computer, start by removing infinity scrolling websites from your bookmarks bar and replace them with informative blogs and learning opportunities
Install StayFocusd, a chrome extension that lets you block specific websites for a set period of time. You won’t be able to access those sites until the timer expires, even if you restart your computer or delete the application
Save articles to read later with the Evernote Web Clipper. Choose “Simplified article” and save it to a notebook (I call mine “Read Later”).
Batch reading of those articles during your leisure time
Download Audible and always have one audiobook going for while you’re driving or on a walk
Always have one book going at a time on the Kindle

Make Smarter Decisions Designed By You, Not For You

Most of the times you can re-design defaults to work for you, instead of against you

Change your environment so it fits your goals
Re-design all the defaults in your life and decide for yourself what the optimal choice is

Spend Less

Use cash instead

Never buy something on impulse
Go for quality, not quantity
Define a “no spend” day every week
Have a shopping list on your phone
Write down all your expenses on a Google Sheets
Being aware of your spending influences your decisions in the future

Save More

Pay yourself first: create a recurring transfer to a savings account each time you get paid.

Match bad habits with savings: for every dollar that you spend on something you want to consume less of – such as alcohol – match it with a deposit into savings.
Micro-transactions feel less painful

Eat healthier

Remove from the house food that isn’t on your diet or you know is unhealthy

Buy items from the outer edges of the grocery store
Trick your brain into eating less per meal by using smaller plates and bowls
Plan your meals in advance so you always know what to eat each day
Use Sundays to cook for the entire week and freeze excess food
Do not keep alcohol at home

Positive and Negative Defaults

When you’re faced with a challenge and need to make a decision, your brain starts to look for the path of least resistance

“Default to zero” is a powerful hack to change behavior through negative reinforcement and force you to make smarter decisions
If you remove your ability to watch television, you unplug the TV and cancel your subscription
Now your previous default is not accessible anymore
You just designed your life as a choice architect

Make Smarter Decisions at Work

Work in full-screen mode to remove all distractions and focus on the task at hand

Wear headphones
Plan your entire week on Sunday
Listen to the same song on repeat
Design productivity spaces for different types of work
Request to work remotely for one day per week
To stop procrastinating, use the 2-minute rule: if it can be done in 2 minutes, just do it; if it takes more than two minutes, start it
Train other people to respect your productivity, work, and time by using an automatic response