Foggy Experiments in Behaviour Design. Reducing the times you check your email to a better and healthier lifestyle

1. REDUCE EMAIL
TO IMPROVE HEALTH
A GUIDE FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS
THE FIRST STEP
FOGGY EXPERIMENTS IN BEHAVIOR DESIGN
by @ashpodel
Inspired by BJ Fogg’s behavior design principles

2. Q. What’s common between
zombies and emails?
A. You keep killing them and they never
stop coming.
Inspired by this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html?_r=0

3. Email and Health?
Heart rate monitors were attached to
computer users in a suburban office setting,
while software sensors detected how often
they switched windows.
People who read email changed screens
twice as often and were in a steady “high
alert” state, with more constant heart rates.
Those removed from email for five days
experienced more natural, variable heart
rates.
From a recent UC Irvine study.
Source: http://today.uci.edu/news/2012/05/nr_email_120503.php

4. Where to Start?
Start by defining a crisp target behavior.
For example, “I want to check email only twice
a day for a maximum of 1 hour each time”.

5. A Possible Sequence
Limit device use
Establish
designated
email time.
Establish an
“email processing”
system*
Start by 1 day a week
Expand to other days
Target crispy behavior
* See Inbox Zero and Getting Things Done

6. FIRST STEP:
Limit Device Use
Start by reducing the devices you use to check email.

7. Let’s start with your phone.

8. Turn off push email
Go to your email Set Fetch to Manual
settings and click on
Fetch New Data

9. (The brave disconnect their account)
Delete account from the
‘Mail’ app.
When urgent, you can
always go to your
mobile browser.

10. Survive consequent FOMO
(Fear of missing out).
You are probably scared that you will miss
out an important urgent email. No matter,
survive this fear.
It is an experiment.
Try this for a week and see if anything fell
apart.

11. Remember:
Only do this if this is something you
already want to do.

12. I’d love to know how it goes!
If you try this, let me know how it went for you
@ashpodel
Follow me on @ashpodel as I explore BJ Fogg’s behavior design principles.