Your Social Circle Is an Environment

I used to think choosing my friends was about who I liked, but I eventually realized I was choosing something else: who I would become.

A few months ago, I wrote about treating your life the way a great designer treats a game or product, where instead of relying on willpower to make the right choices over and over again, you can intentionally design your environment so those choices become easier.

In the article, I focused on our physical environment: putting your gym bag by the door, removing junk food from the kitchen, and eliminating distractions from your workspace. The focus was on making success the path of least resistance. If you want to learn more about that approach, you can read the full article here.

In this article, I’ll focus on another part of your environment that may be even more powerful than the physical spaces you occupy: the people around you.

The habits, attitudes, and expectations of the people you spend time with have an enormous influence on what you do. Human beings are social creatures, constantly looking to the people around us for signals about what is normal, what is possible, and what is expected of us. If everyone around you exercises, exercising feels normal. If your friends are building things, working on themselves, or pursuing ambitious goals, those behaviors start to feel normal too. The opposite is also true, because if everyone around you complains about their job but never does anything about it, or talks about wanting to change but never takes action, eventually that can start to feel normal as well.

Research into social networks has found that behaviors and emotional states such as obesity, smoking, and happiness tend to cluster among connected people, which doesn’t mean your friends control your behavior or determine your future, but it does mean their behavior helps to shape the environment where choices are made. So the first lesson is to pay attention to what your social environment is making normal, and then decide whether that version of normal is helping you become the person you want to be.

I learned this lesson the hard way, because at different points in my life I had people I loved who were pulling me toward behaviors and ways of thinking that weren’t helping me grow, and some of those people were close friends or family. For a long time, I thought I had two choices:

• I could accept those relationships exactly as they were, even when they were having a negative effect on me

• I could have some dramatic confrontation and cut people out of my life.

Neither felt right. Fortunately, I learned a much better strategy: fill your calendar.

Instead of focusing on who I needed to remove from my life, I started thinking about who and what I wanted to add, so I joined activities, spent more time with people who were doing things I wanted to do, and built new friendships around interests and goals that mattered to me. As my calendar filled with new people and new activities, I naturally had less time for relationships that were pulling me in the wrong direction, and rather than having some dramatic breakup with my old life, I was simply spending more of my time building a new one.

That changed the way I think about this completely, because if someone you love wants to grow with you, that’s fantastic, and you should invite them along, encourage them, and help them when you can. Growing alongside people you already care about is one of the best possible outcomes, but you can’t make someone change, and you don’t have to make their choices your choices. You can still care about someone while recognizing that spending less time with them may be the right decision, and you can create that space without declaring war or burning a bridge.

This is another form of environment design, because instead of relying on willpower to constantly resist the influence of the people around you, you can deliberately spend more time in places where the behaviors you want are already normal. The more your social environment supports the person you are trying to become, the less energy you have to spend fighting against it.

P.S. If you are interested in working with me directly on your project, and learning from my mistakes rather than making your own, you can join my Think Like a Game Designer: Design Lab.

One of the easiest ways to change your social environment is to ask yourself, Where are the people who are already doing the thing I want to do? Once you find it, then start spending time there.

If you want to exercise more, join a running club, recreational sports league, or a gym where people actually know each other (like Crossfit, F45, or Orangetheory); if you want to build a company, spend time around entrepreneurs and communities built to support them; if you want to become a better game designer, go to conventions, playtests, and designer meetups; and if you want to contribute more to your community, volunteer. Depending on what you care about, there are meetups, masterminds, workshops, classes, charities, clubs, and communities filled with people who have already made the behavior you want part of their normal lives, and simply spending more time in those environments can change what feels normal in yours.

I wouldn’t recommend trying to completely reinvent your social circle overnight. Lasting change happens through a series of smaller decisions that compound over time. Start putting yourself in environments where the behaviors you want are already happening, meet a few people, return consistently, and give those relationships enough time to develop naturally.

For a lot of people, especially those who are introverted or shy, this can be intimidating, because walking into a room full of strangers and trying to “network” sounds miserable. Fortunately, you don’t need to work the room or impress everyone there, all you need to do is meet one person. Find someone you naturally gravitate toward, be genuinely curious about them, ask what they’re working on or how they became involved with the group, and look for opportunities to help before asking for anything yourself.

Then come back, because the second time you walk into the room there will be one person you know, and after a few more visits there might be two, then five, then ten. Those small interactions build over time, and eventually you aren’t walking into a room full of strangers anymore, instead you’re walking into your community.

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to design our physical environments, but our social environment deserves the same attention. The people around us influence what we talk about, what we spend our time doing, what we believe is possible, and even what kinds of lives we imagine for ourselves, so choosing where and with whom we spend our time is one of the most powerful forms of environment design available to us.

I’m not suggesting treating relationships like productivity tools, abandoning people the moment they struggle, or surrounding yourself only with people who can do something for you. It means recognizing that the people around you help define what feels normal, while also accepting that you have some control over whose influence occupies most of your time.

There’s something powerful about being around curious people who make things, take care of themselves, and pursue things that matter to them. People who challenge you when you need it, celebrate you when you succeed, and care enough to tell you the truth instead of simply telling you what you want to hear.

Just as importantly, you’re part of that environment too. A great social circle is always changing, and while the people around you inevitably shape who you become, your presence is also helping shape what that circle becomes next.

In the end, willpower alone isn’t enough. Every environment you inhabit is either making your desired behaviors easier or making them harder. You can design a life that naturally pulls you toward the person you want to become, and the people you share that life with are one of the most important parts of that design.