Notes on how I reduced my daily stress by altering three parts of my environment

@erikpavia

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

Reduce Informational-Noise Sources

“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

De-clutter Work

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

Create a Sleep Haven

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.

Unexpected Result of the Activity

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

Process

Reducing household clutter• Get rid of dishes to force more frequent washingMaking my room into a place for rest, not work• Eliminate work station• Hide school materials

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