The Startup Spouses

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a site called Hassle Me, a service that will email a reminder to you at “semi-unpredictable” intervals. I was intrigued by the semi-unpredictable part, because studies in behaviorism suggest that variable ratio (think slot-machines) and variable interval (think pop quizzes) schedules of reinforcement have higher and steadier response rates. And I know that my response to fixed interval reminders (like Outlook meeting reminders, or my alarm clock, for example) tends to worsen over time until I ignore whatever the consistent trigger is.

I wanted to test the service out, but couldn’t think of what I wanted to be reminded to do on a semi-regular basis. Most work-related tasks I either do every day, or am overly aware that I’m not doing them, so an email reminder just seemed to be overkill. Today, however, I was reminded of the one thing we always forget to do as I was re-folding what seemed like 40 brown paper bags - bring our canvas bags to the grocery store. We went through a phase in which we actually bought canvas bags every time we went to the grocery store because we never remembered to bring them, and then we just gave up. We’re at the point now that unless we have a bonfire, we are going to be overrun with paper bags.

I set up a “hassle” for Kris and I to be nagged about canvas bags about every 5 days, which is probably the frequency we go to the grocery store. HassleMe promises to email one of us at random. I’ll keep you posted on how our behavior modification experiment works out.