WNYC’s Note To Self Podcast Curbs Listener’s Information Overload with 300,000 Texts
Time to read: 3 minutes
July 19, 2016
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Unchecked multi-tasking can (and will) turn you into someone who you don’t recognize, someone who eats peanut butter M&Ms at 10am.
Every time you switch from one task to another, your brain burns through glucose. When your brain’s glucose reserves run low, you become a sugar zombie on the hunt for the fuel your brain needs to multitask. Unsurprisingly, this behavior leaves you stressed out.
The average “information worker” switches their focus every 45 seconds. That’s 640 switches in one eight hour work day.
WNYC’s Note To Self podcast challenged their listeners to defy habit, to stay steadfastly focused in the age of information overload — by sending them 300,000 texts as part of their Infomagical Campaign.
Switching Focus Every 45 Seconds
The hours spent tethered to a never-ending stream of updates, emails, pings, DMs and desk knocks left many Note To Self listeners unable to connect to others, and even themselves. 15,000 Note To Self listeners admitted they needed the podcast’s help and enrolled in Infomagical’s SMS program.
Note To Self gave their listeners a simple quiz to determine what they wanted out of their focus: to be more focused, more creative, more in touch with family, more productive at work etc.
They issued listeners daily challenges via SMS, and checked in on the listeners’ progress throughout the day with a follow up message. The first challenge was simple, albeit Herculean — focus on one single task. Don’t give in to the 45-second switch. Do not check Facebook while writing searching for the sentence that will open the next paragraph of a blog post. Okay, maybe that last one was a challenge for myself.
Winning The Fight Against Distractions
In the middle of day one, Note To Self fired off a round of texts checking how participants focus was holding up, and how they felt. Over 50% of users replied.
On the first day of the project, 40% of participants reported feeling less overwhelmed. By the final day, 71% said they felt less overwhelmed.
Note To Self host Manoush Zomorodi, told Neiman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen, “We were worried about annoying people with texts, but in retrospect, I wish we’d sent them a reminder every single day,” adding, “People would say they’d forgotten and we got them back on track. Notifications are annoying if you don’t ask for them, but if this is a week when you decide you want to change something in your life, you want as much help as you can get.”
A Radio Voice Captured In A Text
Zomorodi found that SMS resonates similarly to radio with listeners. Each medium of communication fosters direct connection of radio host to radio listener. She was able to easily carry the style of voice her listeners recognize on radio, into texts. But, WNYC had to carefully weigh how to get those messages out, while keeping their servers upright.
Sending 15,000 people over 300,000 well-timed text messages was no small task for the engineer behind Note To Self’s SMS campaign, Alan Palazzolo. Alan worked with the Note To Self team to stress test their Twilio app before rolling it out.
By the end of their Infomagical week, they had sent over 300,000 texts and had 15 hours of listener voicemails waiting for them. Listeners opened up about their week-long challenge in a way they might not have in a public forum. In saving listeners from becoming candy zombies, Zomorodi helped them find a better part of themselves, and may have found a better part of herself in the process.
Zomorodi told Nieman Labs “A lot of them would start out by being like, ‘Hey, Manoush, here’s what’s going on in my day.’ At the end, some people would say, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.’ I was really moved by it in a way that I had not expected to be.”
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