Following the previous introduction to healthy aging, I want to explore an effective way to better our lives — making unconscious changes.
P.S. This article is inspired by a TED talk titled Nudging Healthy Aging by my previous Dutch professor — David van Bodegom. I highly recommend it.
What’s the reason that you are sitting?
“What’s the reason that you are sitting? That’s because there are chairs. That’s the design of this room.”
Humans are not made to sit all day. But we design our environment to make you sit all day.
Very often, we are not aware of sitting all day or sitting immediately whenever we see a chair near us. It’s happening unconsciously.
Can we make a change then?
It’s we who design our living and working environment. So yes, we can create a healthy place for us.
For example, we can equip our office with an adjustable table, which allows us and alluding us to stand and sit interchangeably in a day.
Such change can also apply to the canteen room in our office building. We offer both options in the same room: standing tables and regular sitting tables. You can choose to eat by standing at a small table or sitting around a big table in a canteen room. It’s already the case for some places in some countries. For example, on every floor of the research building of Rotterdam Erasmus Medical Center (I did my Ph.D. there), you will find some rooms for working, a canteen room, and standing tables for lunch.
But what if your working environment is not designed that way?
Well, the easiest and quickest way to make a change is to improve the design of your living place, including your home office. That new change will benefit you and your family altogether. Besides a comfortable couch or a chair, let’s ensure you have other options to improve your living environment in the long run.
Nudging health — a slight push to make a significant impact on your life
Scientifically, nudging means that a slight push in the right direction every day for a while will have a long-term effect, a significant impact on your life.
Making healthier options is easier than it feels for many people. To become receptive to the nudging in your environment, we can make it easier and more fun to ensue unconscious changes in people’s lifestyles.
Another example mentioned by Prof. David van Bodegom:
The Copenhagen government wants people to cycle more. Two main reasons: bicycles are a powerful tool for reducing carbon emissions on a global scale, and biking is a healthy exercise.
But the government didn’t tell people they should bike more because of this or that benefit. Instead, they make biking in this city more fun, easier, faster, and accessible.
Copenhagen now ranks as the world’s best capital city for cycling, and locals take pride in getting around on their two-wheelers. And safe infrastructure is one of the contributors to people’s biking habits.
The safe infrastructure is also an essential element for Dutch cyclists. No wonder I don’t see so many cyclists in China’s cities, as there are few bike lanes. I used to bike like other Dutch people in the Netherlands, but I failed in Shanghai.
I don’t feel safe as a cyclist in this city or any other city in China and many other countries. For example, in Shanghai, many E-bikes compete in the bike lanes with you; besides, car drivers are not as kind as the Dutch drivers who will wait for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the streets. It requires bravo and talent to bike in Shanghai and other Chinese cities rather than in a Dutch or Danish city.
Despite the unsafe biking on the street in Chinese cities, I feel safe walking around in any city in China at any time, including at night. On the contrary, I don’t feel the same feeling while walking in the evening in the Netherlands. Here is why: I was followed by a guy in Rotterdam before; a group of Moroccans harassed me in the daytime in a public park in the same city. These are just a few of my bad experiences with that city. That’s why I discarded the routine of walking alone in the evening when still living in that country.
No country is perfect. But safeness, I believe, is the first thing to be considered as a great city. What’s the point of designing a beautiful city without a safe feeling for locals and foreign visitors? Sorry for this slight digression.
Leveraging nudging effect to improve personal life
There is bother if you work in an environment that’s not designed to make people more active as you can always change your living place and home office.
So far, I have done various experiments on myself to improve my life. One of the most successful ones is my design of making home workouts fun and more accessible.
I never thought I could keep the workout habit after finishing the training program at the gym. But I did. One of the most essential factors is easy access to workout equipment at home.
For example, I have a hanging exercise bar and lightweight dumbbells in my room, close to my work desk.
At this point, it might be worth sharing some of the benefits of doing these exercises in case you are unaware of the vast benefits of Dead Hang:
Dead hang is an excellent exercise to improve your health in various ways. Correcting your posture by decompressing and loosening your back, realigning your shoulders, and strengthening your lat is essential. If you’re interested in how I fix my neck hump, check out my top-viewed article — Transform Your Life: How I Corrected My Posture and Fixed My Neck Hump in One Year — A Personal Journey.
Without this equipment, I usually find excuses for not working out today, such as I’m too busy going to the gym. But with such easy access at home, I often do some exercise automatically, without consciousness. It’s just fun and way more attractive than attending a training program at a scheduled time.
Don’t you believe? Just give it a try.
The time cost between the formation of a new habit and falling back into the old one
It takes time for nudging to take effect in your life; nonetheless, you can quickly return to your old track unconsciously.
It happened to me; I want to share it with you in case you want to understand what’s happened:
I returned to China three years ago after studying and working in the Netherlands for many years. My first job in China was still software development. Having gotten so used to the option of an adjustable standing desk, I complained about the static desk the first day of my new job in China. I thought I would keep this complaint for very long. But I was wrong as it took me no more than one month to get used to that new environment — an inactive working style like all of my Chinese colleagues. A life lesson: It took me several years to get used to a standing working desk, while it took me only a month to get back to my old unhealthy habit — sitting all day.
We are the designers who design the room, the house, and the city to make the environment convenient and functional and look nice. However, we also need to consider a new design to nudge healthy aging for the population.
With innovative small changes in your environment, your daily routine places, like office and home, you unconsciously live in a new routine. You are unconsciously making changes to your life in a healthy way.
The beautiful thing is when you develop into this new routine, you won’t even think about it. It’s just your new habit of how you do things.
More relevant content can be found in the Healthy Aging series.
This blog was originally published on Medium. Dive into the full article here: How to Age Well: Making Unconscious Changes to Your Routine.
