Planting Change: The Art of Soft Priming
Creating subtle shifts through mindful environmental cues
In a world obsessed with habit-tracking apps and productivity systems, I discovered something surprisingly powerful in the art of subtlety. It turns out, the quietest changes often make the loudest impact. Let me show you the why and how.
We all want change. At least to some extent, and in some areas of our lives. Yet change is hard.
It can be challenging to begin to change, let alone skillfully navigate its realms as they mysteriously unfold.
We are complex creatures, and achieving the desired change often involves a symphony of many moving parts. And if that wasn’t hard enough – we can meaningfully influence only some parts of that process.
Think of change like tending a garden. When you plant a seed, you're starting your own little transformation experiment. You can choose the perfect spot, prepare the soil, and provide water and sunlight. But the actual magic of growth? That unfolds in its own mysterious way, at its own perfect pace.
This is where soft priming comes in – it's about thoughtfully placing those seeds of change in your environment and then letting them grow naturally. No forcing, no constant monitoring, just creating the right conditions for transformation to bloom.
Soft priming is the approach to actively address the part of change that has to do with the inputs. And then letting the change unfold by itself (with occasional nudges on the way). Think of soft priming as low-key, subtle, soft, nebulous nudges. This approach is a counterbalance to the high-key, hard, and complex solutions like habit tracking apps (i.e. Atoms).
The first step to soft priming is to strategically place these growth-nurturing elements in your environment. I believe that technology can help us with that. Let’s see how exactly.
Your environment is…you
It’s important what you surround yourself with. Think of the room that you spend most of your waking hours in. Notice the furniture there, the bookshelf with your favorite books, the items on your desk that you use daily, and the framed pictures on the walls that bring memories or capture an important idea. All that physical stuff around you has obvious, or sometimes not so obvious meaning. But it has meaning nevertheless. It speaks volumes of you, but not in the language that we commonly speak or even consciously pay attention to.
Notice, that you are an extension of your environment, and conversely – your environment is an extension of you. Any soft priming begins with a commitment to consciously control and influence your environment. Now that we've set the stage with our environment, let's talk about the breadcrumbs of change we're going to strategically scatter throughout our space.
Leaving clues
You begin the soft priming with a clear sense of what it is that you want to evoke. Maybe it’s a single word that has some deep meaning?, or perhaps a quote or an observation condensed into a couple of phrases? Once you’ve got the content, you need to consider the container next.
Let me share a peek into my world of soft priming – it's simpler than you might think, but oh-so-powerful!
The Morning Mirror Moment ✨ Here's a tiny change that sparked big shifts: I placed a small, handwritten card on my bathroom mirror with the word Breathe. Every morning, while brushing my teeth or fixing my hair, there it is – a gentle reminder to pause and take a deep breath. No fancy apps, no blaring phone notifications – just me, my reflection, and this subtle invitation to start the day mindfully.
The Desk Companion 🌱 My workspace holds one of my favorite soft primes: a simple Post-it note that reads I don't need to be perfect. I don't need to have a perfect life. On those days when I'm being too hard on myself (we all have them!), this little reminder catches my eye. It's like having a wise friend who knows exactly when to whisper the right words.
These clues work because they're not shouting at you – they're whispering. They're not demanding change; they're inviting it. They're like old friends who show up at just the right moment. The key is to choose placements that feel natural in your daily flow, where your eyes will naturally land during different moments of your day.
Your clue can be an item, a word, a picture, a smell, anything. If you are just starting with soft priming – I believe that words are one of the strongest clues. They are also remarkably flexible and humans instinctively know how to use them. Words are powerful containers. They can evoke deep meaning, and they are potent vessels for feelings too (think of the word “love” for example). But there’s more.
Words work because humans are visual learners. And consciously repeating our exposure to a particular word or a concept makes the thing more likely to be remembered by our brains. You might be wondering if this soft priming approach is just fancy thinking. Well, science has our back here! Recent studies in environmental cues show that our surroundings dramatically influence our awareness and decision-making.1
Because of that – introducing words as clues in your environment is a viable tactic for soft priming. A written word, on a Post-it note, or displayed on a digital screen that is put somewhere in your immediate environment can be the sprout for a subtle change. Once the clues are planted in your environment, the next task is to simply ‘live them’.
Living clues
Live them? I believe Rilke captured it most beautifully when he wrote:
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke invites us to have patience with the questions we ask.
I invite you to have random encounters with what you wrote yourself.
Encounters without expectations, without pressure, and free of impatience. So the next time you take a break from work, or traverse your environment to wash your face – let your eyes gaze on what you have written. Stop for a second or two. Consider. Meditate on the meaning of that single word or a quote. Let this clue do some work on you for a change. And perhaps, in some distant or not-so-distant future, you will experience the deeper realization you are after.
Clues matter more than we usually think. Environmental cues significantly shape the content of our awareness by providing sensory and contextual inputs that influence perception, attention, and decision-making. Studies demonstrate that visual and auditory cues in collaborative and immersive environments enhance spatial and contextual awareness, fostering better interaction and comprehension. For example, in extended reality (XR) systems, visual cues such as spatial markers improve group awareness and facilitate collaboration by helping users perceive their environment and collaborators more effectively (Assaf et al., 2024; paper). Similarly, augmented reality techniques in spatial collaboration environments show that attaching cues to virtual objects enhances task accuracy and reduces cognitive load, though excessive augmentation can cause visual clutter (Irlitti et al., 2019; paper).