I changed three parts of my environment to make my day less stressful. Here are some notes on the process.

1. Notes on how I reduced my daily stress by altering
three parts of my environment
@erikpavia

2. Reduce Informational-Noise Sources
My phone is the most stressful part of my
environment. I receive many notifications, but not all
are important.
• I tailored my phones notification settings so that
only time-sensitive or important notifications appear
• I created new Gmail filters that delete alerts
• I unfollowed/unsubscribed/unfriended every
stressful or useless source of information
– No more exposure from not-actually-Friends,
uninformative brands on Twitter, useless news sources as
TechCrunch, or political pontificators

3. De-clutter Work
“We were multitasking, or what I like to call ‘no-tasking.’”
Setting up a workspace takes me too long. I often
get distracted and lose track of what I was doing.
• Switched to using an iPad & notebook for class
notes and meetings
– iPad forces single-tasking. It’s too costly to switch
from notes to a distraction
• Created one notebook for notes and one for
tasks.
– No more flipping back and forth for reminders/tasks

4. Create a Sleep Haven
I have trouble falling asleep, and my sleep tends to not
be restful. Waking up is the hardest part of my day.
• Anything within arms reach of my bed has to be for
sleeping
– Put phone on the other side of the room
• Can no longer stay up reading
• Can no longer wake up, snooze, and fall asleep again
• Reduced ambient noise
– Silenced phone (“Do Not Disturb” is a killer iOS feature)
– Got rid of multiple-alarm setup
• Eliminated the ability to rely on “the next one”
• Less stressful morning

5. Unexpected Result of the Activity
Creating environmental changes were easier than creating
behavioral changes.
• The hardest part was finding things in my environment to change.
Once I thought of something to change, the one-time execution
wasn’t hard to implement, and typically yielded an effective
result.
Environmental changes tended to affect ability more than
to serve as a trigger.

6. Process
The process for identifying the changes went as follows:
• I started off with a broad goal: reducing stress
• I looked for things in my environment that facilitated
stress. I identified my phone, notebook, and alarms
• I thought of one thing I could change that would cause
each stressor to cause stress less frequently or less
severely. For my phone, I decided I could change
notification settings
• I abstracted a category for that specific change: change
notification settings = Reduce Informational-Noise Sources
• Thinking of changes for each category became easy

7. Next Efforts
Reducing household clutter
• Get rid of dishes to force more frequent washing
Making my room into a place for rest, not work
• Eliminate work station
• Hide school materials