Willpower won't tidy your home. Ask my cat.

Why the right thing in the right place beats trying harder

Ruby, my newly adopted 10.5 lb cat, is lying across my doorway again, blocking my path to the kitchen. She does this when she wants something that requires my thumbs.

And she timed it. I work from home and she studies me. First coffee is around 10:30. She’s in position at 10:25-ish. That’s the when.

Then there’s the where. She picks the doorway I have to pass to reach the coffee machine, which happens to be where her favorite treats sit in the fridge.

She is arranging the room so I cannot not notice her.

So, I design things for a living (first buildings, then software), and my cat is out-designing me in my own home, using nothing but a little timing and placement.

In my work, there’s a word for putting the right thing in the right place at the right time. A few words, actually (nudge, signifier, choice architecture), depending on who you ask.

But let’s just call it a cue.

A cue makes the next action obvious. So obvious you stop noticing you’re doing it.

You most likely already react to cues, and you make them too. Maybe you put the morning pills next to the coffee, or set the library book on top of your shoes so you cannot forget.

I do this with reusable grocery bags. We’d get to the store and always have a moment of “I thought you grabbed them.”

So now, the second the groceries are put away, the empty bags go straight onto the front doorknob, so the first person to leave takes them out the door without thinking. No more “Did you grab them?” moment.

The doorknob did the thinking for us.

Take the ATM. Old ones gave you the cash first, then your card back. So many people walked off without their card that banks redesigned the machine. Now the card comes before the cash, and you take it before your money without thinking.

The designers designed the problem away rather than blaming the user.

So why, at home, do we always blame ourselves?

If I saw a user stall with something I designed, I’d ask why, and change the design. Somehow that designer hat was switched off in my own home. When something doesn’t get done here, we look for who’s to blame: the kids, my partner, myself.

But we didn’t fix the grocery bags by becoming better people. The doorknob took the job.

That was my aha moment.

So now, when something snags me, I change the room instead of hunting for who’s at fault. Clothes come off in the bathroom? The hamper lives in the bathroom. Toys keep ending up downstairs? There’s a basket at the bottom of the stairs.

You are the designer.

It’s literally my job, and I still miss the mark in my own home. The things you see every day are the things you stop noticing.

But the thing is, we’re the users and the designers of our own homes. You don’t get to pick a side. So you may as well put the hat on.

That just means giving yourself permission to stop blaming yourself, and to look at your space to see what it’s telling you. Watch yourself, the way Ruby-the-cat watches me. When you’re moving through your own home, step outside it for a second, trace your own path like a stranger collecting data, and ask: does this make me think? Do I stall here?

If it does, fix it the way Ruby does, with timing and placement. Put the thing within reach, on the path you already walk, so the next move is obvious.

Fewer decisions, less willpower. The space does the work.

Ruby is in the doorway. I’ll step over her and grab her treat, sitting right next to my creamer in the fridge. No willpower required.

P.S. Putting on my designer hat gave me back a drawer in my pantry. The cue stopped me forgetting my bags, so I stopped buying the plastic ones, so the guilty little hoard of plastic sacks just… disappeared.

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Got a cue going in your home? I'd love to hear it.