Where You Sit At An Event Matters

I was at an awesome event a few weeks ago, BookThinkers Live, and it gave me some great insight into my bookwriting process. It was exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. 

A few hours into the first day, I noticed I’d been sitting a lot and wanted to stretch my legs. Fortunately the chair I chose was on the far side of the room and no one was behind me.  I had full freedom to stand up, stretch, and move around as much as I wanted. I then looked in front of me and realized the people sitting closer to the stage didn’t have the same freedom.

That moment reminded me of the ever present and constant influence of environmental design. Standing up and stretching from the front of the room would be disruptive and draw attention. Something as simple as that is enough to create resistance against the behavior, making it way less likely to happen. 

Alternatively, there are benefits to sitting closer. You end up paying more attention to the content because it’s right in front of you and you feel like you’re a bigger part of it. You’re less likely to check your phone and tune out because you have more eyes on you. This is a benefit of sitting closer, and in this case the environment supports a higher quality experience.

That’s the thing about your environment and every choice that you make: There are so many forces at play and all of them are influencing what happens in their own way. You can’t possibly quantify every environment's interaction with everything you might do… But you can isolate a single action and optimize around a single benefit.

That’s why knowing what you want is so important. When you’re aware of what you’re designing for, you can make choices that better align with it. In this case I did it by accident, but now that I’ve experienced the benefit of it, I’m going to be more intentional about where I sit at events moving forward!

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