O is for Operating Systems

A computer running an old operating system does not need to try harder. It needs an update. You are running operating systems too: an eating system, a fitness system, a thinking system, and — most invisibly — an environmental system made of the rooms you live in and the routes you drive.

Diets try to override the system with effort. That works for as long as the effort lasts, which is why the weight comes back the moment attention moves elsewhere. Updating the system means the new behavior is what happens by default, with no effort at all.

The Environmental Operating System module in this course is the most concrete version of this idea. You will walk through your entry, kitchen, dining room, living room, and bedroom, plus your car and your workplace, and you will change what those places make automatic.