Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Motivation is overrated environment matters more. Welcome, or welcome back to Success with Srini. Today’s podcast episode is based on a book that I’ve read at 17,500 feet above sea level for nearly six weeks. Everything that I’m sharing today is based from this book. I’m going to give you the name of the author, and the name of the book towards the end of this podcast episode. But then, let me give you the backstory of how all this happened.
In 2019, I made an attempt to climb Mount Everest, the idea was to go all the way to the summit. And this was a dream that I was fostering for nearly 20 years. The first time I saw Mount Everest was 1999 and then 2019 is when I made a full attempt. The way you climb Mount Everest is you kind of hike up to about 17,500 feet, you stay there for nearly six weeks. And from there, in during those six weeks, you kind of go up to camp one, camp two, you come down, then you go to camp three, maybe you come down one more time. And then eventually, when the weather window opens, you go all the way from the base camp, all the way to the summit. Camp one, camp two, camp three, camp four into the summit. So there is a lot of waiting time involved, waiting for the weather to open and kind of getting the body acclimate and all that, a lot of time goes at the base camp.
Now while you are in the base camp, a lot of activity going on. Because you’re waiting for everything to happen, things to come together, though, the way we spend our time at the basec amp is by talking to other people, maybe listening to music or some talks, and reading. Now if you have your books on your portable devices, on your phone, or your iPad and things like that, now you are draining energy. If you read books on your phone, then you’re draining the battery charging, battery is expensive. Because you’re depending on solar energy, so solar panels to charge your batteries. And if you have cloudy days, then sometimes you are unlucky. And because there are a lot of people, nearly 4,000 people at the base camp, everybody is going through the same Wi Fi line even though there is internet, so there is not much you can do on the internet either. So given these two restrictions, what I decided to do was I decided to carry some books, physical books.
And while in Kathmandu right before the start of the expedition, I went around to different bookstores there. And I picked up this book that I heard about this book before. But then I saw the book and I said Ah okay, glad I found it. I bought the book. And the downside of this is because I wanted to read this book along the way, right, there are multiple days that go by before you start kind of hiking from the south side. If you want to climb Everest, you have to start from local and then you keep on going. You hike up a day you stay a day, and then you hike up, you stay kind of stay in one of this tea houses. So I wanted to carry this book with me because I wanted to read the book as I was hiking up to the base camp. Now every time you add a book or anything of has some weight, you are adding weight to your backpack. So there is also some physical stress involved with it because you raise the the weight of your backpack now you may get tired and all that. So I did get tired reading this book because I was carrying this book in my backpack all the way to the base camp. So I had to read it, I read it. That’s the backstory, you see almost four minutes gone, telling you the backstory.
In this book, the author talks about how motivation is overrated, and environment is everything. It gives an example of a doctor by the name Annie Thorndyke at the General Hospital in Boston, she along with her team decided that she wanted to change the eating and drinking habits of all the visitors and the staff of the hospital without asking them to do anything. All she did was she studied the layout of the cafeteria and she made some changes. She rearranged the drinks in the cafeteria. So the sorta vent to the refrigerator that was next to the cashier that was behind the cafeteria and she placed multiple water stations in different locations inside the cafeteria. At the end of three or six months, there was a drop of 11.4% in soda sales, and there was an increase of 25.8% in water sales.
People choice of products is not what they are but where they are.
Case in point, people choice of products is not what they are but where they are. Take that statement into your life right now. You’ll see you’re buying things because of where you found them not because what they are. There was a discussion I had the other day with a friend of mine. He said, “Srini, many people listen to your podcast, because they are from the radio.” True. In fact, you know the environment, right? So you majority of the listeners of this podcast will maybe you yourself, too. You heard me on the radio, because I was there and you were there listening and I was there speaking, I told you to listen to this podcast. So the environment suggested you would I gave you a cue to come to this podcast. Otherwise, let me tell you there are incredible speakers. There are zillion podcasts. I’m nowhere. And I don’t think that I’m anywhere. It so happens that because I was in along with you in the same environment and I gave you a cue to come here you are here. So our habits are based on the cues of the environment within which we are in environment plays a hand in shaping our behavior.
In 1936, Kurt Lenin came up with a simple formula. He said behavior equals the function of the person in the environment, B = F or P comma E. In 1952, economist Hawkins Stern came up with a phenomenon suggestive impulse buying. What it means is a shopper sees a product and imagines the need for it. I personally remember a story. Back in the day when Borders was still around, you to step into the border store right at the entrance. You see this rack with beautiful magazines and primarily the one or two three magazines in the front. Were all bikes like Harley Davidson or Honda bikes, and on the bikes are this beautiful models. And as I started going deep into marketing back then, I started to understand you know, people are buying these magazines or buying because this magazines and the pictures on this magazines, the cover design and all. They all speak to some unconscious needs they have, which is if I get this bike, maybe I can have this beautiful life and maybe this beautiful girl. All these are unconscious patterns. Now interestingly, people who do buy these magazines will never end up buying a bike. Even for example, the Ferrari magazine, people who buy this Ferrari magazine for expensive car magazines or bike magazines, they will never ever end up buying those bikes. It’s all in their imagination or the cars all in the imagination. Been a shopper cease products at the line of sight. That means products are placed to the height at their eye level. Those products move faster from the aisles than the products that are placed below the aisles.
Our actions are not shaped by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option.
So you want to move a product quickly in the store, place them at the eyeline. Coca Cola sales are up 45% more because they are placed at the end of the aisle racks. Interesting. People drink more Bud Light because it’s widely available in all the bars. People drink more Starbucks because it’s available at every corner of the state. Many of our actions are not shaped by purposeful drive and choice but by the most obvious option. We are talking about our perceptions. We are talking about what we are seeing eagles. They have long distance vision. Snakes taste air with their tongue and move in the environment. Sharks detect electricity in the water and other vibrations from other fish. Bacteria have chemo receptors that detect toxic chemicals.
We humans our senses. We have five obvious senses, which is touch, sight, smell, sound and taste but there are many unconscious senses that are activated in our system. For example, if my blood pressure goes down and I fall down, chances are my body automatically moves towards eating salt. If I feel less energy than my body automatically moves towards eating sugar. If I feel thirsty, my body automatically moves towards drinking water, need for salt need for sugar need for water. They’re all unconscious functions of the body.
What we see is what we do.
Most of our senses are in our vision, there are 11 million sensory receptors in the human body, out of which 10 million or two sight, the brain spends most of its energy processing what it sees. visual cues are greater cues of our behavior. What we see is what we do. You see if queues are making us productive, or unproductive, or defining our behavior and our character, why not we have productive queues. And why not we identify those which are unproductive and get rid of them. If you are a listener of this podcast, many many days ago, I talked about how to create tiny habits. And one example I was sharing in one of those podcast episodes was if you want to go hike on you want to go run in the morning, then why not have your running close next to the bed. If you want to drink water more often, why not fill the place your house or the area where you’re operating with multiple water bottles.
The entire content from today’s podcast comes from this book called Atomic Habits. And Atomic Habits is written by James Clear, profound writing, profound observations, incredible book. I read this book multiple times. Specifically, everything that I shared on this podcast comes from Chapter Six of this book, titled Motivation is Overrated, Environment Often Matters More. Get this book, not from the library, but buy this book. Read it and I promising you your life is gonna change.
Thank you for being a subscriber. Thank you for being a listener. If you’d like to this podcast, give a rating write a review. And I’ll be back here again tomorrow with an interesting story. Stay tuned. Bye now.