Design for Default: How to Simplify Your Decision Making Process

Although we usually have the freedom to make a wide range of choices at any given moment, we often make decisions based on the environment we find ourselves in:

• If you sleep with your phone next to your bed, then checking social media and email as soon as you wake up is likely to be the default decision.
• If you keep a water bottle with you throughout the day, then drinking water rather than soda is more likely to be the default decision.

Default choices are not inherently bad, but the entire world was not designed with your goals in mind. In fact, many companies have goals that directly compete with yours (a food company may want you to buy their bag of chips, while you want to lose weight). For this reason, you should be wary of accepting every default as if it is supposed to be the optimal choice. - James Clear