Hat tip to the folks over at the Nudge blog for alerting us to a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on flu shots. Here’s the setup:
1. Large companies offer free flu shots to their employees
2. All eligible employees receive reminder mailings with the times and locations of the free flu shots, but some employees are asked to write down when they would plan to get a flu shot
3. The main outcome of interest is what percentage of people in each group get a free flu shot
The interesting twist here is that some of the people were asked to write down a date only and others were asked to write down a date and a time. What do you think happened?
First, only 33.1% of the employees who only received reminders got a free flu shot. Having folks write down a date increased the vaccination rate by 1.5%, but that effect was not statistically different from the “reminder only” condition. However, having folks write down a date and a time increased the vaccination rate by 4.2% - a rate that the authors state, “is both statistically significant and of meaningful magnitude.”
So, think about how you make your plans for working out or for heading over to the farmers market on the weekend. If you currently plan on going “sometime on Saturday” you might plan more effectively by setting up a specific appointment with yourself - “I’m gonna go to the gym at 8 and then get breakfast at the farmers market at 10.”
Lastly, if you have been thinking about or planning on making a purchase from the Dan’s Plan store, but haven’t gotten around to it yet, consider making an appointment with yourself to do so before the end of July. Why? Because from now until July we will be offering free shipping on all orders. One of our goals is to make it easier for you to achieve your goals, so if you’ve just been curious or “on the fence” regarding any of the products, please feel free to take advantage of this offer.
Cheers,
Larry