Remember Phil Will Die
Last I used WeCroak to gain perspective on stress in my life. The app gives a notification fives times a day reminding you that “Remember You Will Die.” The automation was was a good way to be random about the when the notification would happen, this intern meant the thoughts or activity I was doing was also random. I wanted to see what would happen if I was more deliberate in when I received the notifications.
So I went back to a very old school very analog way of sending notifications, the sticky note. I wrote “Remember You Will Die” on a number of sticky notes and placed them in locations I visited frequently. I chose the locations based on behaviors I wanted to be more conscious around. Below are the locations.
- Material closet– I have a tendency to forego PPE when using tools or chemicals, I know this is not a good habit.
- Shoe/jacket closet– I look at my running shoes everyday and don’t pick them up even though I know running (or exercising) is good for me and gives me more energy.
- Leaving Bathroom– A lot of accidents happen in the bathroom, be aware…
- Bathroom mirror– Written backwards to do it can be read in the mirror, this is more about being true to myself.
- Dry food pantry– I have an odd relationship with food and I have tried many times to change my behaviors around food, maybe this will help.
- The refrigerator– Ditto form above.
- Top shit drawer– I get dressed everyday, why not have some contemplative thoughts every morning.
- Laptop– I don’t use my laptop daily, when at home I use my desktop. Sometimes work can stress me out, having this reminder on my laptop is a good way de-stress as I start working.
- Front door– The outside world is a dangerous place, take heed.
At this point I can’t say how effective it is at changing my behaviors, I need to sit with this for much longer. I will say that when I encounter these notes I do stop to think about my actions associated with those specific places. It could be interesting to adapt this into a location based service using either location data or for small spaces NFC. I could envision a a series of small NFT tokens associated with goals or behaviors and places in your house. When you come into range a notification would be sent with specific information about how to think in relation to the set goal or behavior.
I would like to push this a bit further and refine the actions and wireframe an app. Overall I think the idea of notifications that helps to put things into perspective is something I will continue to use and ideate on.