Good Life Project - The 3 Things Every Room You Live In Must Have to Be Okay | Leidy Klotz

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Most of us think the biggest decision about a room is whether it's functional. Leidy Klotz thinks that's the wrong question, and the right one changes how a desk, a kitchen, or an entire return-to-office policy actually lands on the person living inside it.Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. His research has appeared in Nature and Science, and he's been interviewed everywhere from Hidden Brain to Freakonomics to The Atlantic. Before any of that, he spent 22 years as a professional soccer player and then built schools for a living, which is part of why his take on space is so physical and so lived-in.In this conversation, you'll explore:The three psychological needs that every space either feeds or starves, and why they trace straight back to hunter-gatherer survivalWhy Susan Cain's open-office backlash and today's return-to-office mandates are the same failure wearing different clothesThe strange, well-documented phenomenon of "habituation," including the story of an architecture student who walked past a six-story landmark building for years without ever seeing itA simple practice called "space before screen," and why the top of a parking garage might be the cheapest awe you'll ever findWhat it means to build a space that keeps someone's memory alive, drawn from one of the most personal stories Leidy has ever told on a podcastIf you've ever felt something shift the moment you walked into a certain room and couldn't say why, this conversation gives you the language for it.You can find Leidy at: Website | LinkedIn | Episode TranscriptNext week, we're sitting down with Chris Guillebeau to talk about why the anxious feeling that you're running out of time might be less about your calendar and more about a story you've never questioned. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss any upcoming episodes!Check out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So much of us think the biggest question about a room is whether it works. Does the desk fit? Does the light turn on? Is there enough storage? It turns out, that's not even close to the real question when we think about the spaces we inhabit. And getting it wrong might be why your home office has felt just subtly off for years without you knowing why and maybe why your entire home feels the same. In this conversation, you'll discover the three psychological needs that every space you inhabit is either feeding, or starving. While the open office debacle and today's return to office fights are the exact same potential mistake, you'll hear about how an architecture student walked past a six-story landmark building for six years and never once saw it and why. We'll talk about a two-minute practice that can shift your entire nervous system using nothing but a parking garage and how the space that you build can become one of the ways that you carry all of the things that you've been through in your life with you, the good, the bad, and the ones that you really remember in the right way.

Our guide is a clean behavioral scientist and University of Virginia engineering professor, Lidie Klotz, whose research has appeared in nature and science and so many other places. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We'll jump right in after this short break. I have spent a lot of time in thinking about my relationship between place and how it affects me on so many different levels, emotionally, psychologically, cognitively, physically,

health-wise, like we are in actually geographically the place that we're in right now in no small part because of it, how it makes me feel and how it makes my wife feel and just the, you know, it's something that I think is one of those decisions that we tend to never actually make and just default into. It's like the places that I'm happy are not necessarily the predictable ones, right? And those places that make me feel good are not necessarily the predictable ones. You could go into like a super opulent mansion and that might make me feel really uncomfortable, even though, you know, might make somebody else feel great or, you know, the place that I,

one of my favorite places in the world is just a screened porch, any screened porch. And I think it traces back. I mean, there's the outdoor, but it's also like there's this, it brings back memories of my grandmother. And she would always talk to me about, we she had a cabin on a lake in New Hampshire. And she would always talk to me about the Red Sox and the Celtics. and bring tea out. And, you know, it's just now I like that space for that reason.

So I guess just kind of noticing that the, there was more to how you, how you experience the space than just kind of the physical pieces of it. Yeah. I think when so many of us think about our spaces, whether it's our home or office, leisure, oftentimes the first thing that comes to mind is, is it functional? Like is a space design for the thing it's meant to do? And that's what we focus on. Does it have the features and the bells and the whistles?

And we're like, okay. Yeah. I'm putting it together my office space. Like, does it have a desk? Is it, you know, and is it going to be a standing desk or a moving desk or is it doesn't? Yeah. And we look at the features that would make it, quote, functional. Not that that's a bad thing, right?

We want it to be functional. It should serve the purpose it's being designed for. And so often we don't actually ask a bigger question, which is some version of, but how do I feel when I step into that space? Right. It's a huge mess. Yeah. And when you do ask the question, how do I feel, then it becomes very subjective, right?

And I get that how I feel is subjective and it's not going to be the same for everybody, but what's so beautiful is that psychology knows a lot about, you know, kind of how things make you feel, right? And so can we figure out, you know, the same way the space should meet our basic needs for, shelter and maybe ergonomics and, you know, the window opens or doesn't, can we figure out what are the basic psychological needs that our spaces should meet? So you look at these three different psychological needs, agency, competence, and connection when you're thinking about a space, which is like in a small way related to self-determination theory. Talk to me about these three different elements and why these three different elements and how do we start to think about them

in the context of the spaces that we inhabit. Yeah. And in self-determination theory is an incredibly robust theory that's been developed over time in lots of different cultures and lots of different contexts. And, you know, what we mostly think, what we mostly use it for is how am I going to feel good at work, right? Well, I feel like I have agency in terms of picking my own tasks, right? Or do I feel like I have agency and like charting the course of my life. And we've made it like kind of a disembodied thing. But the original reason we have these needs is to deal with our surroundings. So if you just do a thought experiment to like our ancestors, hunter gather ancestors, right? They're moving around the ones that are going to be more successful are the ones that

figure out how to manipulate the environment to protect them from predators, manipulate the environment, to protect them from the elements. And so they have to be drawn to physically do that. And then to physically do something, there has to be some psychological pull, right? And so the psychological pull is kind of agency, competence, and connection. And so it's easy to define those things in that context, right?

So for our ancestors, like the agency is the feeling like you have a say in your surroundings, right? You feel like you can do something about this situation. situation. And competence is actually doing it, right? Competence is, hey, I can, I did just manipulate the situation. I saw what happened. I feel better about myself as a result. And I'm growing because of it too, right? I'm learning what happened. And then the connection is connection to other people, obviously, but also connection to something larger than yourself, right? So you feel like you're connected to the world around you. And actually, one of the

original reasons people connected beyond hunter gatherer tribes was to to manipulate spaces in a larger way right to build monuments and now the tribes are coming together and they have to coordinate to be able to build these big things and then they realize then they end up staying in the same place and you're setting up these systems of governments and larger scale relationships so again self-determination theory totally relevant to all facets of our life but it originally originated in our relationship with our surroundings, and we can still either feed it or starve it in that relationship. So I guess the question is, how important it is, let's focus on the agency piece of this, because I think it's the thing that probably a lot of

people really connect to immediately, which is like I have the ability to sort of like make decisions about the nature of the space that I inhabit. A lot of us feel like we don't, especially in a work context. And granted, that changed a lot over the pandemic, and we'll talk about that more. I think a lot of stuff blew up. For generations before that, sort of like you said yes to the job, knowing that part of what was being offered you was the

cubicle, the open desk, the like office space, or like one day earning your way into like an actual like enclosed office with a door. Like it wasn't something that I think for a lot of us, especially early in our career, we had any sense

of agency over like, I'm just going to say yes to the opportunity. The space, whatever they throw at me, I'll deal with it. Yeah, yeah. No, and that's like our generation, in my generation, at least, I'm 47, where it's like, yeah, that was, there was absolutely no conversation about anything about the office. You were just happy and pleased to have the job. You would show up when they said, you would, you know, sit where they told you to sit.

And so, yeah, it's new now to be kind of shaped in a good way, I think, to have more autonomy in that decision. Yeah, and I think it affects us. deeply. I remember Susan Kane is an old friend of mine, the author of the book Quiet, which was really an important book, I think, for about a third of the population who identifies as introverted, and that would include me. And when that book came out, she wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, it created quite a stir, where she went at open offices. And that was at the time, like, everyone was moving to open offices. It was the vibe. It was like, the walls must

come down. Thousands of people working in open space. And the idea was let's increase serendipity and interaction and stuff like this. And her whole like thing was this is a disaster for a lot of people. And yet, you know, like massive amounts of money were put into redesigning space. Yeah. To basically remove walls without ever actually really understanding how it's going to affect people. Yeah. That's that's such a great example. I think the, failure there is that, you know, kind of we shifted the, the layout above these core needs, right? And so I'm an introvert too. And Susan's work has transformed my life. I have students read books in my classes and, you know, somebody chooses quiet every semester. But this need to to have a say is more important than whether it's open office or

closed office, right? I have a piece coming out in the Wall Street Journal about. about agency in the work environment. And the beginning of the article is, I wish I had had Susan's article, because it just shows how it kind of goes back and forth between somebody advocating for open and then somebody advocating for closed and somebody advocating for open.

And those are important considerations, but what's really important is that people feel like they have a say in those spaces. We have an amazing open office on our campus. And one of the reasons that it fails for some people is less is even, it's because everybody associates it with the dean who kind of like forced it through, who's no longer there. And, and then, you know, so it's, they feel like they didn't have a say in what this space is, even though it's like obviously better than the other spaces that, you know, they might be

able to access. Yeah. I would, I would just add one. You, you started this with like how important it is. And one of the studies I found that was super striking for me was a study of nursing homes. And it's a pretty famous study in what they did was looked at people who the control and experimental group. One group had was able to move things around in the nursing home. The other group was not. And then 18 months later they came back and the group that wasn't able to move things. around, they were 50% more likely to be dead. And so it's like this is, again, that's, it's a, you know, I want to be careful.

I mean, it's like 60 people in the study. But that's how fundamental this need is, right? That it's a, it's not going to kill you if you're a 47 year old, right? But it's, it's a need that kind of keeps us going and has a lot of impact on, you know, the rest of our health. What's the, I don't know if there's science on it, but even if there is, And like, what's the theory on why the lack of agency and the ability to control your immediate space would potentially have such a profound effect on our well-being? I think it's the connection to depression, basically. And so, like, you, the, again, this isn't my, I'm not a psychologist who's going to meet with somebody and help them make their life better. But the, from what I understand, you know, psychologists will sometimes if somebody's,

depressed prescribe, hey, well, clean up your kitchen or rearrange your living room. And it's not because a clean kitchen or a re-end-range living room makes them feel better. It's because the act of doing it kind of restores some of this sense of agency in the world around them. And I think probably for the nursing home example, it's like these are people who have had agency taken away in a lot of other ways, right? They're getting moved into a nursing home and they're not able to do some of the things that they used to do and it's probably particularly acute if you then can't also move the physical spaces. And I think the idea would be that, you know, having agency, and this can work in both directions, having agency in the physical space can then spill over to having agency in other places, but also

not having agency in the physical space can spill over and to make you feel like you're not having it in other places, which then it correlates with depression and some of these other things that can be really devastating. I mean, it's so interesting. So part of what you're saying here is that, you know, there may be, you know, qualities of the space itself that make a difference in the way we experience and that may affect us psychologically and emotionally,

maybe even cognitively, who knows. But the deeper thing here is that knowing that you have control over what the space will feel like is actually a huge piece of this too. It's not just the actual things in the, like, it's not just the shape and size and artifacts in the space. is you knowing that you actually have some level of control over shaping it to what you want to be. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, to go back to the Susan Kane office example, right? It's like,

so this could mean, yes, it could mean rearranging your office and, you know, being able to hang pictures of your family on the wall. But it could also just mean, hey, I know I can use the conference room for an impromptu meeting. Or I know that I can, you know, navigate through the space or I know that I can go outside for a walk if I want. want to have a walking meeting with somebody. And so it's like part of it is, I think we get stuck in feeling like the intervention needs to be something physically done to the space, which sometimes it does. But sometimes you can also have an intervention just in how you kind of move among the spaces to which you have access.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is, we saw this with open offices, especially like open offices and tech, which became a huge thing. Yeah. You know, and all of a sudden you would walk into an open office. and a huge percentage of people would be sitting there with noise-canceling headphones. So they couldn't actually change a physical space. But I need to do something.

You know, put something on my body that will let me experience it differently. Yeah. And that's a good, I mean, one of the tips or one of the remedies, I think, for when you notice your agency is being taken away in a space, because there are just certainly, there are certain times when that happens and there's nothing you can do about it, right? But then using that as a cue to realize why you're frustrated and then do something about it, right? So take agency in some other way. So putting on the headphones is a small thing. Or if you, you know, if you're stuck in the office at a certain time, you can rearrange your desk to face the light.

Or if you're forced to come back to the office, maybe you can kind of set your commute time differently. And so I think using that feeling of, hey, I have agency taken away when you recognize. it and then kind of when you feel that using that as a cue to find agency somewhere else. Yeah, that lands. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. So I'm curious what you think about this and as we're, I want to extend this. So I'm able to Colorado right now after a lifetime in New York.

We came out here in the pandemic. But when we came out here, we didn't, we weren't moving in our minds. We were just bugging out for a couple of months. We'd go back to New York and six years, later, apparently we're still living in the mountains. Yeah. So for the first 18 months, we literally lived in 18 different Airbnbs and rentals. No way.

We were bouncing from literally, like sometimes it was a couple of weeks, sometimes it was a couple of months, but averaged out to that. It was, it was kind of crazy. We have, we have a cargo box on top of our car. Most people store their athletic gear and stuff like that. This was like everything we owned. That was every couple of months. It was just all right there.

And we hit a point. where once we kind of realize, I guess maybe we're out here, you know, one of the things that tipped us into saying, okay, so let's just stop, like, let's just go, like, settle into a house.

I remember saying to my wife, I don't want to keep living in a space that somebody else has already created for us and know that, like, I don't have an ability to change it. Like, I want to go and create my own interior space. And it was really, it almost it kind of surprised me because I was like I really felt it like I felt the weight of not being able to control the the space that we were in in a way that really it was real and and not that these were bad they were most of them were beautiful spaces exactly yeah they weren't they weren't like we'd walk in and it's like this doesn't feel like me yeah no and I mean I think there's the this line of research that you mentioned behavioral economics before where it's like where if you you put effort

into something you assign more value to it basically, right? If you put your own effort, it's now it's like this thing plus your effort. And obviously with spaces that can happen, right? If you feel like you shaped the space, then you are going to appreciate it more, which is kind of it's kind of freeing in a way, right? Because so many people are worried about doing like the exact right thing with the renovation. I'm not an expert. I can't figure this out.

But it's like you're going to, your mind is going to help you like the thing. that you decided on and that you did. And then if you don't like it, you can always redo it. But it tracks with what, you know, with what we know about how we value things that we've played a part in creating. Yeah. In your research or research that you've reviewed from others, are you aware of maybe a set of common features that are in different types of spaces, whether it's a home space

or an office space. Everyone's going to be different, unique. But are there sort of like, are the common patterns where beyond the notion of having agency and the ability to control it, but like things that do or don't exist in the space that affect us in deep ways? Yeah, I mean, people always go to aesthetics

and that one is like curious to me too. I think the way that I think about it after like looking at everything, all the research is that we like what we've been surrounded by. That's the overarching, theme. A space is going to grow on you, right? When I go on vacation, I grew up going to the New Jersey shore, still go there. It's awesome. The first time I went to the outer banks in North Carolina, I was totally disoriented and uncomfortable. And it's the same fundamental geography, right? It's a

sandy barrier island on the Atlantic Ocean, but I just like, whatever the zoning patterns were and the fact that there was a walking promenade instead of a boardwalk, it just threw me off. But then I go for a run and then spend a couple days there and I get more comfortable with the space. And part of what's happening there is that you're you're kind of tuning out the distracting things and you're starting to notice the things that you like about it and then you focus on them right. So it's like the Outer Banks has a soccer field where the kids can play and it has, it doesn't have the boardwalk, but it has the beaches are wider or whatever. So there's, there's that piece like kind of just immediate familiarity. But there's also like going further back to

kind of what you've been exposed to in your life. So I think like the house that you grew up in, right? And it might, you know, just because you grew up in a Cape Cod doesn't mean you need to live in a Cape Cod later. But, you know, I had a bedroom with crooked like ceiling angles. And I still find that incredibly charming. And there's there's science there. There's the mere exposure effect basically. So a famous study of this and a striking one, they had unhatched chickens, some of them in eggs, listening, like hearing music, hearing music.

And then the chickens hatched and they put the ones that had heard the music and the ones that hadn't heard music in a pen and put a speaker on one end of the pen playing the music. And the ones that had heard the music gravitated towards the music. And it's like it's another illustration of this idea that like familiarity breeds liking. So just what happens is you become comfortable with these stimuli and then your brain's able to process them easier. And so you can kind of gravitate towards them. So if you think about that with just notes in unhatched chicks, now imagine the the literal physical environment that you're surrounded by and how much of an impression that's going to make on you. So I think when we think about what you like now, thinking back to what you've been surrounded. by in the past. But then last but not least, and this might be the most general for all people,

is that like we like what our ancestors have been surrounded by, right? And mostly that's nature. And yes, you can just, you know, kind of hack that by putting a plant on your desk. And now you've got nature inside and we tend to like nature. But it turns out like what we like about nature is kind of the underlying patterns, right? And what one of the patterns in nature, for example, is symmetry, right? You could identify an animal versus a non-living thing based on the symmetry. And now you see that, okay, this is something that either might present an opportunity or a threat. So our eyes are drawn to symmetry. That's a principle that like comes from our relationship with our surroundings. Another one is that we just like this balance of, balance of complexity and order. The best way to illustrate it,

I think in the built environment is just a brick facade. So brick facade is something that, you know, nobody really thinks is ugly in most cases and you're, it just kind of sets into the background and is sort of soothing. And nobody thinks twice about it. But if you look at it, there is kind of this underlying pattern there, right? It might be that the bricks are staggered by half each level and that creates an

overall aesthetic or it might be that there's a pattern where like one brick is long and one is the narrow way and then one is long and it's staggered on each row all different patterns but they all like give rise to this kind of bigger apparent complexity but there's also some underlying order so i think if we can think about that in the types of things that we're designing that will work well i mean moving that into interior design there's the classic interior design advice of like having kind of different textures right but also having a one organizing principle to the space. And if you think about that, that's kind of like how nature does it, where nature's got like the organizing principle, but then it gives rise to this, you know,

over more complex situation. Does that make sense or is that too abstract? Yeah. No, I mean, I think my sense is it's probably hard to get more detailed than that, right? Because like what, when you start to drill down to individual details, it's about somebody's individual experience and their recollections and their past associations and all those things. Right. And I think, you know, again, like you can, I think it's important to start there. That's like one of the general principles with all these things is like start with agency competency connection and start with these natural patterns. But then there is research showing, for example, that like different paint colors are going to make you feel different ways. But don't, don't start with that because these other factors are,

are much more important. And quite, you know, the research is stronger for the other factors. You know, with all of these things, there's variability because people are different, right? And people have different preferences. What I think the science says is that these, you know, these preferences for being surrounded by natural forms are stronger than just, you know, breaking it down to a specific paint color versus another specific paint color. I think it's more important, for example, that you choose the paint color than what the paint color is, right? Yeah, the agency part of it. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, this feels good to me. I choose that. And then I'm going to actually the competence, then I'm going to actually integrate it into the room. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot

of sense to me. You also describe an interesting phenomenon here. You tell this story of, I think her name was Tessa, a particular grad student, right? Somebody who literally trained to notice buildings, walks past his massive gym on campus every single day and has no idea it existed. Take me into what's happening here and why, like, why this matters. And Tessa is like the most grounded, like she's not one of these people who's walking around looking at her phone all the time. She's like does yoga. She's like such a master noticeer. So yeah, I was, and I was telling her where to meet for a class that we were teaching together. And I said, we'll just turn right at Memorial Gym. And Memorial Gym is, it's six stories, the equivalent of six stories tall, surrounded by open fields.

It looks like there should be Roman baths inside. And it's historically significant. I mean, like it's memorial for the students who were in school during World War I dedicated, like raised like a third of the money for it and then donated the money in memory of their classmates who died in World War I. So it's just it's impossible to miss. And and yet Tessa didn't see it. And it's a really extreme example of how we can just become habituated to our surroundings, right? Where it's like we move through this world so much and we're focused on certain things and then we tune out the things that basically, you know, to go back to our ancestors, don't present an opportunity or a threat. Seemingly don't present an opportunity or a threat. Now that, you know, and most of the time that's good.

When I leave my house, I don't want to have to notice and scrutinize the baseboard and the, you know, whatever, the molding and the doorknob every time I go out, right? But again, this is a really cool building. and this is an architecture student and she's not noticing it. And so it's just an illustration of how we become habituated to our surroundings. And it causes us not to notice and then also not to notice some of the opportunities that they present. Yeah. And I think so many of us have actually experienced this. And we point, at least in modern times, to the screens.

You know, so much of our time is spent heads down in our palm, you know, looking at a screen or on our computers. But often when we're out and moving through space, You know, like we're just, we're not paying attention at all. We're just looking around and entrusting a peripheral vision and people telling us to stop bumping into them. They keep us going where we're going. You have a practice called space before screen. Yeah. That's kind of designed to help remedy this.

Yeah. And this predates screens, by the way. I mean, like the screens have exacerbated the problem. There's, I mean, a famous study showing how fire, like people, nobody has any idea where the closest fire extinguisher is. right? And I don't even know where the closest one is to me in my office at work. And this is something that's designed to be noticeable and yet we don't see it. The space before a screen tip is just acknowledging that, okay, you know, instead of trying to fight the fact that we're always looking at our screens, just use your screen as a cue to notice the space around you. Right. And so I was talking to a friend who read an early copy of the book and she said, oh, now I'm thinking of you every morning when I wake up and I look at my phone. And I'm like, oh, no, I need to like take in the room that I'm in. And this is, I do this in my bedroom and it's like, it's a room that I'm in all the time, but it's a little different every morning just the way the light shines and the way that, the way that it feel, the air feels, everything. So it's an opportunity to kind of just get more

in touch with your physical surroundings. And I think you know this and your audience knows it, but it just bears saying that like the screens do amazing things. They're allowing us to talk right now in allowing us to communicate in such cool ways. You're in Boulder. I'm in Virginia. But they're two-dimensional, right? And they're really only working with one cent, maybe two senses. I mean, there's a little sound and sight.

And there's all these amazing things that our spaces can do that the screens will never be able to do. And so it's just a shame to get kind of pulled out of that physical world to such a degree. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You also talk about another mechanism, the awe audit. Oh, yeah. Take me into this. Yeah.

So awe is this, I mean, this is, you know, Dacher Kelner has done a ton of great work on this. They've studied this emotion of awe and all like kind of identified this emotion of awe. And though it's just kind of being in the presence of something that's bigger than you are, right? They looked at all these different things that were like giving people awe. and one of the categories in the research was kind of the physical environment and not just looking over the Grand Canyon, but like physical spaces. You know, it could be a church that, you know, harkens to the heavens or it could just be like I was mentioning my grandmother's porch before, just like a regular place that makes somebody feel awe. And so I think the awe audit is just acknowledging that our physical surroundings can make us feel this way and paying attention as you're moving through the world at when you feel awe. awe, right? And when you do feel awe, trying to return to that place, right? Because the place can

give you that sense, right? So I think it's a, we just been talking about noticing. So how do we like use that noticing to then put ourselves in places that it's not just curiosities, but it's actually this amazing emotion that, you know, can be triggered by the physical surroundings. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I hike all. the time because being in natural environments, especially where we are where, you know, there are big peaks around us. It just drops me into that state on a regular basis. It's good for me physically, emotionally. And it's also, it turns out, it's really good for me creatively and cognitively, too. I've noticed over time. Yeah, 100%. And there's great research supporting that.

I would say, like, just going to the top of a parking garage can do it for me, right? It's like, you go to the top of a parking garage and you've got like a totally new view on your town. And it's amazing to think like, oh, look at all the stuff that's happening down there. So if you're not in Boulder, Colorado, you can just do the parking garage. I love to actually, and I'm thinking if you're in a city or something, like take the elevator up, some or higher in your building, like to see if you can like peek out of window some or just completely change your perspective, right? Yeah, 100%. Just literally change your perspective, right? It's an example of one of these things that is, comes from our relationship with the physical world that's been like changed to mean a whole bunch of different things.

but it started with our physical world. I think one of the things when we think about space also, this has certainly been top of people's mind for the last five years, you know, is navigating a decision about where to work, home office, hybrid, remote. You know, this has been thrown up in the air for a lot of people. And it's interesting, because you haven't, the overlay,

when you think about this question, one of the things you bring, you're bringing us back to agency here also. Like, is it so much that you have to, like you're you're going to an office and being there. Is it so much that you choose, like that you're in a home office with a different setting or different like resources available or office equipment?

Or is it really the fact that you get to choose that makes the biggest difference here? I don't want to downplay like how important it is to have the, have your employer kind of feel comfortable enough to like let you work where you think is best for you. Right. And I think that, you know, being able to work from home or being able to come into the office when you want to is a great option.

I also recognize that not everybody has that amazing privilege, right? And so it's how do you kind of hack that from the inside if you're not the CEO setting the policy of where people work? And it's, you know, if you do have to return to the office, well, like what are the what are the pieces of that that you can control, right? again, can you like rearrange your commuting time or can you choose where you work in the office? And I think that is going to make you feel better. At the same time, you might feel like you have like this complete freedom in terms of working from home. But sometimes that can be disorienting often because there's like too many choices, right?

It's like you've got, oh my gosh, like where do I work today? And I think trying to figure out like how do you like give your. yourself enough choice in the physical surroundings at home without like kind of overwhelming yourself with choice right and making it feel like you know you don't want to be a professional interior designer you you want to get your work done um but you also want to have enough say in the space that you feel like you've you know you're the one who shaped it yeah i mean yeah i remember when it's probably 2023 or so um when like these three letters started to terrify people are Yeah.

Turn to office. You know, and all of a sudden you're saying like RTO, like, and people have been like literally moved, you know, like to different places around the country around the world and we're still working and all of a sudden waiting being called back. And so much of it like you're describing it, it wasn't about whether, like part of it was, you know, like I feel like I actually just legitimately do work better in my home office or I really want to be back around people and I really love being back in the office. But along with that, you were hearing a lot of conversation that was just resent. that people were being told what to do. And underneath that was this implicit thing that people were saying, what's really going on here is a lack of trust. Like, you don't actually believe I'm doing the thing that I was hired to do in the space that's most comfortable to me. And like, the psychological element of that was really brutal for a lot of people. Yeah. It's saying you don't

think I have agency, right? You don't, you're telling me I can't choose. And you don't think I'm competent, right? You don't. think I can do what you hired me to do. And that's, that is, that is brutal. I think the, and I do, you know, some advice for the people who, who get to set, make the spatial decisions. I think it's, you know, sometimes people just have to be there, right? And I understand that there are times when that's the case. But if that is the case, like really clearly communicating why and not pretending like it's a choice, right? If coming back to the office is just going to happen,

don't have a committee to decide, right? Just tell people that it's going to have to happen, and this is why it's going to have to happen. The other piece of that is the message that you're sending, it can also be very dissonant with the things that you're saying, right? So it's that trust back to the trust of the employees, and I bet, you know, these employees who felt distrusted, I guarantee you the mission statement of the company

was something about like how we, our employees have freedom to do what they want, right? And our spaces are always like broadcasting messages. And so if you're saying that people have freedom, but you're sticking them in cubicles and telling them they have to sit there from eight to five, then that's sending a very different message than the mission statement. And that's really harmful too.

Yeah. And I mean, you hear about office. situations too where there are sensors and chairs, where there are art tracking sensors. Like literally they're tracking how often you get up to pee or to get a glass of water or like to talk to somebody. And it's like I hear about these things and I'm just like if you feel like you need that, you like there's a much bigger problem here. There's a massive culture problem here going on. Yeah. And if you can and the technology can be used in the, in the, in the for good too, right? Like you can use the technology, for example, to show people what

conference rooms are available. Technology can show people like, not just like where the temperature is optimal for them, but like where the humidity, where the views, where how many people are in a space going back to Susan's introvert extrovert, right? Like, here's a good spot for the introverts today. Like the sensors could be doing that. And instead they're saying like, this is when you left your seat. And that's just that's, so that's sad. Yeah. It's kind of wild. You were nearly finished with the draft of this book, if you're open to talking about it.

I know you write about this. When something happened that really changed everything, something really rough for you in your personal life, and at the same time, you write about how this also set in motion, a really interesting way to express a connection between space and people, especially people who are really close to your heart, take me there. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, my daughter, Josephine, I just, she died at four years old on Christmas

morning in 2023, and she, you know, she just got sick, and two days later she was dead. It was the worst thing ever. And, you know, bad for everybody who live, but bad most of all for Josie. I mean, she was just such an amazing kid. I can tell one space-related story about her that she, they do such a good job now teaching kids about, like, boundaries at school. And this story was in the book before she died. And it was like, because boundaries obviously is a very physical thing. and all the talk about boundaries recently is about like the social,

emotional boundaries, right? But so they teach the kids about boundaries and Josie had gone to, went to preschool and in the playroom, like it's chaos and you can just yell space. And that means everybody has to give you like a 10 foot radius. And so I was, I was in our house one day and she's like playing with Legos. It's just me and her.

I don't know if it's Legos or something else, but it's just me and her. And I'm like going through to do laundry. And she's like, space. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, you have to give me my space. I'm like, all right. I love that.

Can I go over here? She's like, because I'm doing your laundry, you know? And she's like, yeah, you can go over there. Just don't look at me, right? And it was like, it was such her personality too. Like, not only she was so good at like saying what she needed and wanted, but also just like messing with me because she could. And like she thought it was hilarious to make her dad do something like that.

So, you know, that was kind of who she was. And yeah, I just, it's, it's nice to talk about who she was before I talk about her not being here anymore. And she, so when she died, I mean, the last chapter of the book was always about, you know, how we use spaces to live on, right? I mean, it was talking about things like the Egyptian pyramids or like in Mesopotamia, apparently they, the rulers would like write the names. on the blocks so that if somebody disassembled the thing that they made, their names would still be on the individual blocks. And now people donating buildings to, there are no donating,

yeah, donating money so that colleges can build buildings, which I appreciate as a professor and someone who cares about education, but it's also a way to kind of live beyond yourself, like share these ideas beyond yourself. And so when Josie died, in addition to having the privilege of sharing some of her stories through the book, being able to, you know, put her spirit out into the world through spaces.

So it got me thinking about, like, how do you do that? And as I was thinking about, how do you do that? There was this time that was like really memorable day for me with Josie. And we were walking between a small, between our house and a small pond on campus where we would always go to like fish or catch frogs or, you know, just run around or whatever. And she would always take a different way to get there. And this particular day we had gone through. It's a house that the university now owns, but it's just a house.

And so we had walked through their yard, through some English ivy, and then there was a path from the porch to the street that we were on. And on the path, the homeowner had tried to make themselves immortal and written their name in marble. And so Josie at the time, she could never read, but she couldn't read. so the letters can say whatever you want. She looks down at the inscription and she says, that says Josie's way. And I think she knew that like the double meaning that like this,

not only that she just named this path for herself, but like Josie's way of being in the world was such a way that you could like name something for yourself. So we, we've built a path next to the best playground in town. It's, you know, it's like a half a quarter mile long probably.

But it allows kids to get. down into the woods and kind of have their first hike. I was out there a couple of months ago. The snow was melting here, but the path was still icy. And two kids had like made their way down the icy path and the moms had stayed up at the top. And, you know, the moms were ready to go and they were like, all right, guys, come on up. And the kids kind of looked at each other and didn't say anything.

And the moms were like, seriously, we got to go. and one of the kids just looks back up at his mom and says, we're not coming. And I was like Josie would be so happy with that response. And so I think just kind of, you know, that's one little way to keep her spirit in the world in a way that helps people. And she's got cousins who have built their own little Josie's way in, you know, Tennessee and New York. And so I certainly doesn't fix any. but it is trying to kind of use this connection between the space and our memories to keep her spirit going yeah and i think so many of us we have these associations with somebody who is

really important in our lives really close to us in our lives and moments in time where we shared a space in a particular way and when we somehow re-inhabit those spaces it's almost like we're back with them yeah it's a it's a it's remarkable. And I go, the Josie's way that we built, it isn't even, I mean, she never went there. But I, when I go there, you know, when I see that kid, like, I'm, I'm as close to Josie as I'm going to get. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? For me, it's kind of how you respond, right? How things are going to happen. what is your response to them and kind of the joy in being able to do that and the

example you set by being able to do that. And I, you know, those of us who are fortunate to be able to kind of control our responses and, you know, have some say in our responses. Like that's, it's a pretty amazing thing.

So that's kind of something that has always been helpful for me. Thank you. So the thing I'm sitting with from this conversation is really how much of what we call a vibe actually breaks down into something specific, agency, competence, and connection. That's the whole framework, especially when it comes to the spaces we inhabit. Does it support or not support those things? So whether you get to choose, whether you feel capable acting inside a space, whether it connects to something bigger than yourself, once you hear it named that clearly,

you can't unsee it in your own kitchen, in your own office, in your own commute. And then there's this thing called habituation. The idea that your brain will straight up stop letting you see things that don't register as a threat or an opportunity, even a six-story building you walk past every day. That one really stuck with me. So here's what I'd actually love to invite you to do this week. Pick one space you're in constantly and ask which of the three needs it's failing. Then change one small thing that you'll.

actually can control. Not a renovation, maybe a desk angle, a walk you take instead of a meeting you sit through small and yours. And hey, before you leave next week, we're sitting down with an old friend, Chris Gillibault, to talk about why the anxious feeling that you're running out of time might be less about your calendar and more about a story that you have never questioned. So be sure to follow a Good Life Project wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss that or any upcoming episodes. And do me a quick favor, a seven second favor, share this. conversation with just one friend. And if you feel inclined, go ahead and leave a review wherever you consume podcasts. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers

Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help from Troy Young, Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields. Signing off for good luck. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.