How your environment shapes you

I just spent a week living among elves, undead, and orcs. Sleeping in a canvas tent and collecting copper for quests instead of chasing views.

The setting and the people around me made me forget everything that had felt crucial just days earlier. My routines vanished, replaced by delivering messages, solving riddles, going into battle, and cooking over a fire.

Having zero reception helped too.

Since starting Orbit, I’ve taken breaks but this was the first time I truly unplugged. And it showed me how much your environment shapes what feels “normal.”

For months, each week had blurred by. Asking myself repeatedly:

“How is it Friday again? “

But the week at Conquest felt like a month. I moved more, ate better, and never thought about scrolling.

You’ve likely experienced this too on vacation, you relax and almost become a different person. Only to come back wondering how to keep that feeling.

Returning to a hyper online world has been challenging to say the least. I saw how my apartment and my routines were all designed around creating content and nothing else.

In a room the size of a small street style basketball court I have 3 connected screens, countless cameras and dozens of notes on the wall that remind me to feed the internet with content.

Driving me to be terminally online.

The strangest part of this whole experience was that a fake fantasy world felt more real than the real world. Every interaction felt human-scale and if you wanted to learn something or get anything done — you had to do it. Not type a prompt into a text box.

If you feel stuck in a loop of waking up, logging in and endless consumption, you might want to take a moment to see how your environment reinforces those behaviors. But you don’t have to life in a tent in the woods or rent a new office. You can just set up zones dedicated to different activities.

CGP Grey made an excellent illustration of this idea at the height of the pandemic days.

On my end the first step I did to literally shape me is to create space again to work out and put up a piece of paper to track my fitness activities. So that next time I play the role of a fierce warrior I also look the part and can rock a sleeveless shirt without looking like a kid wearing hand me downs.

The other important way of adapting my environment is to do a clean sweep of the content I consume. After a week without even looking at a screen and having only real face to face interaction on a human scale I noticed how hard everything around you is fighting for your attention and how important everything seems to be right now.

I deleted my YouTube watch history and will continue to curate the feed it serves me. Earlier this year I already unsubscribed from a lot of newsletters but now I’m becoming even more ruthless with it. All in an effort to create a life that is worth living and isn’t just spent in front of a screen.

But I know a few of you reading are digital nomads and people that move around frequently. I’d love to hear from you. Have you noticed how the space around you shapes your work, your live and your thoughts? Tell me if you find this challenging or invigorating.

💛 Valentin

PS: Levi Allen just made a video about his latest attempt at shaping a space around him