From home to work and everywhere in between, behavioral scientist Leidy Klotz demonstrates that a thriving inner world requires thoughtful engagement with our surroundings. Our physical environment determines our habits, feelings, and relationships in ways that we don’t often consider, until now. In a Good Place offers new practical wisdom, backed by Klotz's research and rigorous insight, to help us live happily and productively in space.

Immersing readers in locations from beach huts to modern offices, from the backyard where we once played to the college dorm where we forged lifelong bonds, he illuminates how consciously connecting with our physical spaces can increase our mental wellness.

So many books address how to live a good life. This one is about where. The excerpt below comes from the book's Introduction.

◊◊◊◊◊

DIVIDED WORLDS 

At one point in my life, a great simple pleasure was taking my two young kids to the library or bookstore. I would help each of them pick out a book, then get them settled at the kid-sized reading tables. Big brother, just beginning to sound out words, next to little sister, just learning to flip pages. 

Then I could steal away for some quick browsing of my own. My first stop was the section with shelves labeled psychology, decision-making, or self-help; as a behavioral scientist (and as a type-A personality), I’m drawn to books about how our minds influence what we do and how well we do it. 

Then I would make my second stop: the books categorized as design, or architecture, or even home improvement. That section of books appeals to my interest in our human-built surroundings writ large, from the intimate spaces we call home to the layout of entire cities; from modern skyscrapers to outdoor expanses that appear “natural” but were birthed by human minds too. 

The ideas promising better outer worlds are in one section of the store, and the ideas promising better inner worlds are in another. I get that books on different topics need to be shelved in different sections—otherwise we’d all be wandering aimlessly with no chance of finding what we’re looking for. Still, the complete lack of overlap between these two categories is odd. After all, public discourse has been enriched by books on the mental effects of everything from exercise to intergenerational trauma to screen time. There’s an entire genre applying behavioral science to organizations and people’s lives in them.  

The spaces we inhabit influence our thoughts and feelings too, every bit as much as our genes, screens, and work lives do. But how to harness this relationship between our psychology and our physical spaces? Uncharted territory. 

The divide between our inner and outer worlds predates libraries and bookstores. Since at least the era of the great philosophers, practical knowledge has existed in two different “realms,” one of immaterial thoughts and another of physical things. Then the early advances in modern science—think the theory of gravity from the legend of Newton’s falling apple, or Einstein’s theory of relativity—explained the behavior of the physical world. In the last century or so, psychology and related fields like economics, sociology, and anthropology have shown how human life too can benefit from scientific scrutiny. Now we have empirical data and tested theories to help us understand the realm of thoughts and feelings, in addition to the material world. 

The knowledge advances, but the divide persists. When we want to improve ourselves, we look inward—to feelings, meditation apps, and therapy. When we want to improve our spaces, we look outward—to paint colors and tile patterns, or even the quality of light and air. We treat mind and matter as distinct problems requiring distinct solutions. And in doing so, we fail to imagine how improving our surroundings could enhance our minds, or ways in which we might use our minds to improve our surroundings. 

As with the bookstore shelves, the distinction may serve an organizing purpose. But what is lost when renewing the company mission is on one agenda and upgrading the office space is on another? Can we have any sense of what our kids are learning at school without knowing what lessons are instilled by their playgrounds? Why is building “community” the purview of organizers or social workers, whereas building the physical spaces in which the community might come together is a task reserved for architects or engineers? 

On most college campuses, the gap between our inner and outer worlds is even wider than it is in the bookstore. At the University of Virginia (UVA), where I work, I have to leave the building to get from the behavioral science departments to my engineering office, and trek all the way across campus to get from engineering to the school of architecture. I’m not complaining about the walking. But it is telling that I’m the only one making the journey. 

A few years back, I got to talk about my work with Steve Levitt, the Freakonomics coauthor whose People I (Mostly) Admire podcast consistently delivers thoughtful interviews with everyone from Grammy winners and world-class athletes to experts in decision-making and authorities on city design. After some brief banter about his golf game (his goal is one miracle shot per round), Levitt introduced me to his listeners by immediately grasping what makes my work unique: that I study the intersection of physical design and behavioral science. “Who even knew those two fields intersected?” 

But they do intersect. And bridging that gap between our physical and mental worlds is something everyone can manage, to great effect. When we do, we gain new agency to make our spaces better. And we find new ways to make ourselves better. Because in many ways, these pursuits are one and the same. 

Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” It’s a graceful statement. And it is so true. In fact, the desire to shape our surroundings is an evolutionary adaptation, innate to human nature. And these spaces we shape will always be reflections of who we are and what we care about. The presence of playgrounds signals that a housing development is kid-friendly. Glistening corporate towers with huge corner offices suggest companies that care about presentation and hierarchy. And a new pool in the backyard next door tells me that my neighbor has disposable income (and an obligation to host the next block party). Our surroundings are sending signals like these all the time; whether we have a say in them is up to us. 

But so much of modern life severs us from our physical spaces, making it hard to see the degree to which we influence these places we inhabit—and vice versa. The problem is not that it has gotten harder for us to engage with our surroundings; it’s that it has become infinitely easier not to. We live in climate-controlled boxes, slowly losing touch with how to operate them. Employers dictate where we must work, rather than leaving it to us to choose environments where we’re at our best. And every time our attention gets captured by a screen, we lose another chance to sense, make, and enjoy what’s real. 

In a Good Place is your invitation back into the physical world, armed with new tools for making it work for you. 

About the Author

Leidy Klotz is a behavioral scientist and engineering professor at the University of Virginia who studies how and why humans design. He has written for the Washington Post, Fast Company, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review; has published his work in top journals like Nature and Science; and has been interviewed on Hidden Brain, Freakonomics, Mindscape, and The Atlantic’s How to Build a Happy Life. Klotz has advised clients ranging from the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security to CapitalOne and Amazon.