Make the supportive easier and the unsupportive harder.

This is a general rule that I try to employ when trying to make any sort of change.  Make the habit or thing I'm trying to get away from harder, and make the one I want to replace it with easier.  

What exactly do I mean by that?  Lets use food as an example because that is often where I am trying to make a change.  

What I try to do is make it as difficult as possible to get myself unsupportive foods and make it as easy as possible to get/eat supportive ones.  

What exactly do I mean by that?  Well for example if there is unsupportive food in the house (I don't have complete control over what comes into and out of the house) I put it somewhere far off.  

Usually it's up high, down low, buried behind other stuff, anything I can do to make it more challenging to get to.  For those of you with the ability, maybe keeping it in another closet at the opposite end of the house.  

The nice thing is that this strategy works for everything! 

Let's say you want to keep a room/area more organized.  Make it take as little effort as possible, chunk the tasks associated with that together.  

Maybe you want your bed made, clothes folded, bedroom floor clear, and who knows what else. 

You know what will make that alot more daunting? Make the bed...go down stairs and eat, do “x,y,z” else, come back up grab clothes, go to drop in the washing machine, come back ect.  

That's alot of extra time and effort, an easier thing to do would be to do it all in one fell swoop and not have to come back again.  Make the bed, pick up stuff off the floor, whatever else, grab laundry then go to put it in.  That whole room is taken care of.  

Same sort of stuff can apply to making cooking easier.  

Get everything you need measured out from the very beginning, get everything you will need out first, utensils, bowls, ingredients, if it is something that needs the oven turn that on as well.  Get the ingredients measured out in their own bowls ect. 

Then just run straight through the steps.  You will be surprised at how much time it saves you over grabbing the spice, putting it in the bowl, then going to grab an egg, coming back and putting it in the bowl.  Or getting to the end and having to wait for the oven to heat up.  

Find ways to do as little “moving” as possible, more trips=more time=less likely to do it (which is why adding more trips and more time to something you're trying to stay away from helps on the flip side) and overall that will help you out!

Coach Adam