How often do we beat ourselves up for doing things that we know we shouldn’t, or for not doing things we know we should?

From eating more biscuits from the packet than we’d planned, to getting sucked down a social media hole when we should be working on that lesson plan or report, it’s all too tempting to take the easy road now, even though the easy road often doesn’t align with our long-term goals.

Olympic weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek sums up this tension between short-term pain and long-term gain quite nicely: ‘Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life’.

Whilst this is true in most contexts, there is at least one way we can begin to work towards a tantalising alteration to Gregorek’s adage—a way to create a situation of ‘easy choices, easy life.’ The way we can pursue both short-term gain and long-term gain is simple: environmental design.

Environmental design simply means changing the options readily available to us so that the easy option also aligns with our long-term goals.

Because I’m constantly finding myself not quite living up to my own expectations of myself, I’m also constantly trying to find ways to make it easier for me to do ‘the right thing’. Environmental design isn’t an event; it’s a mindset.

Here are three examples…

I was finding that I would often jump into my email to send a specific message, see some of the messages that were in there, get distracted replying to them, and forget why I was there in the first place. Environmental design? Yes, please! I managed to track down a software called ‘inbox when ready’. It basically means that when you open your inbox, you don’t open your inbox, instead, you just see a blank screen with a button that says ‘Show Inbox’, and until I press it, I don’t see anything in there. This means that I can go into my emails, and send an email, without getting distracted.

Similarly, I have recently been trying to do some PhD work at the very start of each morning. As in, I wake up, open my laptop, and do it right there in bed (the same place I wrote the majority of each of my three books - there’s a fun fact for you!). However, as I have so much on at the moment, I was finding that I would open my laptop to do PhD work, and get pulled into other things that seemed more pressing. Environmental design? Yes, please! At the end of each day, I now close everything on my laptop apart from the three apps related to my PhD - Zotero, Word, and Chrome - and I ensure that the only document open in Word is my current paper, and that Chrome has a single tab open, Google Scholar. I’ve found this really helps me get off to a good start in the mornings.

A more personal challenge I was having is finding myself at the park, the shopping centre, or somewhere else with my family, distracted by some message or ping from my phone. Environmental design? Yes, please! The only thing I really needed on my phone when I’m with my family is the camera, so I bought a second hand handheld camera. Now simply leave my phone at home, or in the car, and can be fully present with my family when we’re on an outing!

Environmental design occurs at the societal level too, when we invite gamblers to place betting limits or impose a social media ban for those under 16,* we say as a society, ‘Let’s try to make the healthy option easier for people.’ As with all environmental design, it is never going to 100% solve the problem, but changing the default is extremely likely to change the outcome for many people.

*This book/website convinced me that social media before 16 is a bad idea.

There are also smaller tweaks we can make. Moving less ‘healthy’ apps from our home screen, or using an app like ‘One Sec’ (scroll to the bottom for iOS and Android options) can also help to create just enough friction to nudge us in the right direction.

Which areas of your life are you finding where willpower isn’t providing a sustainable solution? What tweaks or significant changes could you make to design your environment to support you in living more in line with your long-term goals?

If you have any breakthroughs, please do reply and let me know!

Announcements and Opportunities

The most transformative PD I’ve ever run!

Last night Rory McCaughey and I ran the final webinar for the Foundation Cohort of the Australian Certificate in Coaching Leadership.

Part of the evening was sharing gratitude and appreciations with each other.

When I shared mine, I shared how much I was grateful for the opportunity to run the CCL, which is without a doubt the most transformative PD I’ve ever run (both for participants, and for myself!), and for the opportunity to take what was a phenomenal course built by the Steplab UK team (course design led by Harry Fletcher-Wood), and to improve it even further for the Aussie context, and with the benefit of everything that I’ve learnt about effective teaching and learning over the years.

I also expressed appreciation for the phenomenal generosity of spirit brought by the cohort. I really felt like we were all learning together along the way, and it was like ‘teaching’ the dream class - motivated, engaged, hard working - for the whole year!

Each participant then shared their appreciation with their small groups during breakout rooms. When people popped back into the main room, they shared that quite a few tears were shed in these appreciation sessions. It was a pretty emotional final webinar!

I was genuinely sad to say bye to everyone for the last time. But I know we’ll have lots of opportunities to continue to work together as each one of them continues to build their personal Instructional Coaching skills, as well as the coaching programs in each of their contexts.

I’m so excited for Cohort 2, which begins in early Feb 2025. If you’d like to find out more, all info is here.

Here are all the beautiful people from the founding cohort of the Aussie CCL, both our West and East coast cohorts. Thanks team, it was amazing!

The Explicit Mathematics Program is hiring: We’re looking for a Bookkeeper/Admin/Operations person

Toni, Wendy, Mork, Michael, and I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the interest in the EMP so far, and enough schools have now signed on that we’re in a position where we can (and need to) hire a Bookkeeper/Admin/Operations person!

If you know anyone who might like to contribute changing maths education in Australia (and globally!) through their relevant skills in these administrative areas, we’d love for you to pass on the job opportunity to them. Applications close this Sunday at 9 p.m.

Looking for gifts this Christmas? Why not an Ollie Lovell book (and before postage price change in the new year)?

I’m amazed by the constant stream of people who generously support my work by purchasing copies of my three books: Cognitive Load Theory in Action, Tools for Teachers, and The Classroom Management Handbook directly from my website.

I thought that some people may like a reminder that the books are there, and that you might like one for yourself, or for a friend or colleague this Christmas.

It’s also the case that AusPost has raised postage prices (by almost 40% in total) since I set the postage prices on my site, back in 2020, so I’ll need to raise these in the new year so I don’t continue to make a loss on postage.

So, if you’d like to get in before Christmas*, and before I bring postage prices in line with AusPost’s changes, now is a great time!

*If you order by Dec 10th, I’ll post on the 11th, meaning that you should get all books by Christmas (AusPost cutoff dates for reference)