The Missing Skill In Behavior Change Globally

What if your habits didn’t rely on willpower at all?  

We dive into the overlooked superpower of behavior change. Instead of forcing motivation, we focus on removing friction: the tiny barriers that keep you from starting. Along the way, we unpack real stories that show how visibility, proximity, and preloaded steps consistently beat discipline.  

Angela shares how a 25-year exercise streak survives busy seasons and travel by relying on zero-friction options.  

We look at how a single choice transforms eating habits without any extra effort. Then we jump to the desk: a client’s under-desk treadmill gathers dust until we this, turning intention into daily miles. Another leader’s “progress and purpose” team check-ins finally happen once we write a short script.  

Same people, same goals—new environments that make action obvious.  

You’ll learn practical ways to make good choices inevitable. 

By shrinking the setup and clarifying the first move, you eliminate decision fatigue and let systems do the heavy lifting. The result is consistency that feels natural, not forced.  

If you’re ready to trade heroic effort for smart design, this conversation will give you the playbook: reduce friction, set gentle defaults, and build surroundings that pull you forward.  

Listen now, try one change today, and tell us what you removed to make your next good choice automatic. If this helped, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who’s striving for better habits.  

Transcript

Why Environment Beats Willpower

The 25-Year Exercise Streak

Cocoa Powder And Convenience

Treadmill Setup Unlocks Daily Walking

Leadership Check-Ins Made Easy

The One Question: Remove Friction

Set Future You Up For Success

Systems Over Discipline

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina. I'm your host. I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, and just someone who is really passionate and obsessed with the process of change, human potential, and unlocking, using more of that potential. So together we get to live the most extraordinary lives and create the most positive impact for the extraordinary world all around us as possible. So today, guys, we are talking about what Daniel Pink, one of the I don't know, top researchers or popularizers of the science of behavioral change, the psychology of behavioral change, all the interesting scientific facts and practices in the world. And he just released a short Instagram video about how studying human behavior, writing about it, talking about it, working in it. He uh realized that the most underestimated skill in behavioral change, and something that nobody teaches you how to do, is designing your environment to change your behavior. And uh today I also wrote a short blog about that. How environmental design is the key skill for creating consistent behavior change, and how not often at all we are taught how to do it. When I talk to my clients, it's still mind-blowing for them to experiment and test it out and see how much environment influences their habits, what they do day to day, how they eat, how they exercise, what they do at work, how they speak. Environment is so crucial for all this. And today, hopefully, you're gonna have a few insights, lessons, strategies, and practices to help you become better environment designers. So it is so much easier to change your habits, quit your habits, design new behaviors at work for yourself, for others, at home, for your friends, for your family. You're gonna be so much more powerful. And if Daniel Pink says nobody teaches that, chances are so many people are underusing it, and that can become your true advantage and leverage at creating your best self, living your best self, your best life, and growing, continuously growing towards that future you that you aspire to be. So let's start with let's actually start with a conversation I had in the gym with a friend today, and we were discussing consistency of exercise, and I shared with him how I've been exercising consciously every day since I was 13. And yes, you know, you might get sick, and maybe there were some days when I didn't, when I was traveling, etc. But for the most part, every day for the past what is it, 25 years now, I've been exercising every day. But that's not the most impressive part. The most impressive part is I once again realized how different our approach is, and that is probably why I'm exercising. I've been exercising for 25 years every day. And he uh just came from the break from exercise, being on a leave, being on a vacation, and he is looking into maintaining more consistency in his exercise routine. So while we were conversing, uh I was saying, Yes, I exercise every day, but not every day I go to the gym. Sometimes I do yoga at home, sometimes I do other workouts at home. And he's like, When what do you do when you feel lazy? And I told him, When I feel lazy, I do something easy, like again, that yoga. And he then said, and here's the important part, he then said, Yeah, probably should uh schedule more yoga classes for those days when I need something easier. And I and I shared my routine. I have a video on my Google Drive that I've had for the past decade, and it's the same sequence, the same routine that I now know. I just listen to it, I don't watch it anymore. And whenever I don't feel like exercising, that's my go-to. It's kind of like really good whole body flow, and sometimes I do more of it because it's a 90-minute thing, but there are sequences that you can do, let's say, for 20 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever minutes you want to do them for. And it's on my Google Drive, it's available everywhere where I have any device that can connect to that Google Drive, and that I just do it. I sometimes don't even change from my pajamas, and I would do it by my bed, even if I'm in a hotel room or in some place, uh remote place in the mountains, and there is just you know enough space to move my body meter and a half or something by another meter. That's enough for me to do that. And the most important part is can you see the difference? He was thinking about scheduling yoga classes. Can you imagine me traveling the world and living in all these different countries and not always having the access to the gym or being on the go having to schedule yoga classes? Like that wouldn't survive a year. I had a video on my phone, on Google Drive, actually, so even if I lose my phone, it's still there. And I also have different apps, and there are also different YouTube things. But the beauty of the same app, because it's no frequent, no friction. I can open up my Google Drive, I can open up my yoga video, and I do it right away, right then and there. I don't even have to think about it at this point. You see the difference? How I design my routine, my environment for simplicity and no thinking. And how he didn't, and still not thinking about that, and that's probably why he's struggling with consistency. Not so much because he has more or du or I have more willpower or discipline. I actually don't. I am just really good at designing my environment for things that I want to do more of. Like, for example, two hours of studying, at least five days per week. But let's get to more examples so you get more inspiration, ideas, how you can apply it in your life and work and relationships and everything basically. For example, I recently bought cocoa powder. I like to put it in my yogurt in the afternoon to have this protein yogurt, cocoa powder mix, which is really convenient and fast, and I like to have it for lunch because also it's not heavy and I can just keep working after that. So I got this cocoa powder and I really love it, but I put it into this drawer with dried goods, canned goods, and I thought, well, the next morning when I wake up, uh not the next morning, but the next time I'm having my yogurt, I'm just gonna take it out, open it up, and get put it. And guess what? For the next week I did not open it, it kept sitting in the drawer. And when I did my grocery shopping the next week, I realized, huh, isn't it interesting that I didn't even touch it, even though I actually really love yogurt with chocolate taste. So I did a different thing next week. I opened up that cocoa powder right when I did my grocery shopping. I put it right by my protein powder and by my fridge where I had my yogurt. And guess what? I ate that cocoa powder in a week. And the only difference was it was the same meat, the same life of chocolate, the same damn thing, but it was just a tiny bit closer. And it would probably take me less than a minute to open up and take out the cocoa powder. But in the middle of my day, when I'm like in the flow of work and everything, even that was too much friction for me. Right, another example. I'm coaching quite a few clients or trying to incorporate more movement while having to do a lot of computer work, like a lot of us. And a client got an under-desk, like small treadmill that you can walk on when you have you know your standing desk or desk that can change elevation. And so he got it, and uh the next week that we had our other session, he I asked him, like, okay, like how is how's the purchase? How how did you like it? How much did you walk, etc.? And he said, you know, I didn't do it. And then he started thinking, well, you know, I'm just busy and perhaps maybe lazy, etc. And I said, hey, let's do an experiment and let's do something during this session. So we took 20 minutes. Well, it's a remote session, um, I was there while he was unboxing and prepping it. I took it took him maybe like about 25 minutes, and we tried it out also at the like default setting, and it was good enough, and he was ready to walk. And we finished our session. Guess what happened next week? He walked, I think it was 3.5 case, and he's been walking on a 2 to 5 case uh day uh every day still for the past three weeks. So, what did we change? Did we change a person? Did we create more willpower, or did we train his discipline? Did we even install any additional triggers or reminders? None of that sort. We removed friction, that's all we did. Another client of mine going through leadership coaching program. He wanted to start this check-ins that we discussed with his team call that we called progress and purpose. And we were talking about it for two weeks already, and he just couldn't find the time. Was he just busy? Uh guess what we did uh at one of our sessions? We created a script so that he could use it and knew exactly what to say during those check-ins. We scheduled it in his calendar for Monday. We uh put a tracker in place, simple a Excel sheet that I made with ChatGPT. So we created this flow where he would use the script, he had it on his calendar, he scheduled it with the people, and he had the worksheet to uh spreadsheet to track it. And guess what? The next session that we came together, he did it without having to think about that or having to, I don't know, figure something out, find time, make the time, or rearrange his whole schedule. No, he just did it because everything was scheduled, but he had a script, he had a tracker, and he had my accountability on the site as well, but that was always there. And he's been doing it for uh several weeks now. So again, the the takeaway, it's the same person, the same schedule, the same business, the same everything, the same workload, different system that removed the friction, the friction of thinking about what to say, the friction of having to think about the time, the friction of creating a spreadsheet to track it, the all of the friction was removed, and the behavior just followed. So the takeaway whenever you want to work on a new habit, whether that's leadership, whether that's communication, whether that's networking habit, whether that's again health and fitness habit, whether that's sleep habit, before you start thinking about some complex hacks and reminders and accountability and I don't know what else. Just think, ask yourself one question. Did I remove all the possible friction? Did I script every single move for you for myself so I know exactly when what to do, what tool to use, so it's all ready to go. Hey, Daniel Pink says that that's the most important thing, and he's been studying it before I was born. So there's probably something to it, and we're still not teaching it as a first thing to every single person learning about the habits. How mind-boggling, mind-blowing that is. My mission is to help unlock more human potential. But you know, guys, what I think uh like a huge part of my job might be actually teaching people how to remove that friction for the habits they want to do. And again, a huge part of it is preparing all the tools, making it easy for the future, you tomorrow to do the the habits, the action that you want them to do. Again, like the strong the future you won't be stronger if we especially if we are talking about the near future, they won't be smarter, they probably will have even less energy and more overwhelm and think they're busy with. But guess what? You can set her or his him up for more success removing the starting friction. Now, make the next section obvious and easy and simple and visible, so there is no thinking decision making of any kind involved, and you'll be blown away by how much more consistent you're gonna get with any behavior, however new, however seemingly hard. And just like my friend was thinking about uh with discipline and making promises to himself, and I don't know, just sticking with it. Like that doesn't work. What does work better systems removing frictions and designing your environment? So every behavior you want to do is simple, easy, visible, and you're gonna do it. That's the bottom line, guys. Before you jump off, please share this podcast episode with the person who might be struggling with their habits, and that's probably every other person. Explain this to them when you teach you on it, you get to learn it better, and you're gonna do more of it. So maybe share it in your book club or in your entrepreneurial club or high performance club, whatever group you have where you're working on things with people, share it with people so together we can create more of the environments to unlock more of our potential, to do our best, and and and to create more extraordinary worlds because of all the increased capacity. So let's change the world together, guys. Please share, review of do everything or one thing, one thing, just one thing you can to spread this podcast to more years. And that's it. Till next time, keep changing your environment and keep growing.