Michael Dowling

Project LAY (standing for Look After Yourself) is part social good, part social experiment, part push against online over-extension.

And it all starts with a simple proposal: Nominate 3-10 friends who make you feel good when you spend time with them. Then earn points every time you interact with them online, on the phone or in person.

The Scenario

It’s 5:33pm on a Thursday, but you’re working overtime. Unpaid, of course. It’s been a rough week and your boss is riding you like seasoned rodeo rider on a mechanical bull. Admittedly he’s 40kg overweight, reeks of stale tobacco, and you’re already tired from a week of late nights and early starts. But you keep going on that “Important” request which he needs you “and your special talents” to handle “ASAP”. You make it out of the office, miss your train and have to get the all stops service home. You stand for 40 minutes next to the World Record holder for days without showering, and the lady next to you won’t stop glaring at you for being in her personal zone. You get home, the cat has made toilets on the new rug, the milk has gone off and your microwave won’t work, and it all starts to seem a bit too much to handle. But just as despair starts to well up inside you, your phone suddenly jitters excitedly against your leg. You have a new text message. It’s your Mum, and though she’s just reminding you about dinner tomorrow night with the family, it brings a smile to your face. You can almost smell your Mum’s signature meatloaf, almost hear your brother’s kids squeal as you play “got your nose” on the back patio – somehow it seems like tomorrow is exactly what you need to feel normal again. You reply to your Mum with a quick “Sure Mum seeya then. Love xx” and resolve to make it through whatever tomorrow throws at you. And suddenly all that “crap” doesn’t seem to matter as much.

Sometimes looking after your mental health requires small steps, sometimes bigger interventions, and sometimes you don’t even realise you’re doing it. Everyone draws value from different things, and the link between mental health and strong social support networks is not new.

Here’s something that is.

Be rewarded for interacting with people who are important to you.

The Idea

Call your Mum – get rewarded.

Poke your boyfriend on Facebook – get rewarded.

Go for coffee with your best mate from primary school, who introduced you to your partner and the only person in the whole world who knows thatsecret about you – get rewarded.

You know as much as we do that people do things they like with the people they like because it makes them happy (that’s the simple part). And you’re pretty sure you know how rewards programs work too – you’re probably a member of at least a dozen different loyalty programs from airlines to supermarkets to your local coffee shop (Don’t believe us? Check that wallet of yours and count up the loyalty cards). These reward programs all work the same, with people who sell stuff offering you rewards whenever you buy stuff to try to get you to buy more of their stuff. So why would a rewards program reward people for doing stuff that they already like doing?

Think back to your fledgling days. When your Mum asked you to do something that was good for you, it would either be in the form of a threat (eat your peas or no desert), or an explicit external reward (if you clean your room, you can play on the Nintendo). And, being the darling child you were, you invariably did what you were told. Not just because of the implicit rewards for doing so (i.e. you grew big and strong from eating your peas or got to sleep in a clean “doesn’t-smell-like-pants-anymore” room) but because of the external consequences which your Mum dangled in front of your nose (i.e. another slice of your Mum’s pav, or another hour of sweet pixelated Mario Kart goodness)!

You knew you had to do the good stuff for its intrinsic value (even before you knew what the word intrinsic meant). You wanted to grow big and strong as much as you wanted a nice clean room that didn’t smell like pants. But other stuff always got in the way, and for whatever reason you could think of, you didn’t do it. But you were sure as eggs going to be more likely to do it, and do it more often, if your Mum pulled out a big carrot or stick (or big slice of pav or Mario Kart…). In other words, the external rewards were stronger than the internal rewards in motivating the behaviour (Behavioural Psych 101: Pass).

Now apply this lesson to the good stuff in your personal relationships.

You do stuff you like with the people you like because it makes you feel good. But other than the positive emotions we get when do that stuff (i.e. the internal rewards), we don’t get any real, physical rewards for doing stuff that makes us happy (i.e. there’s no external rewards for the behaviour).

Now think about a time when you were pushed or stressed or accidentally took your friends and family for granted. The implicit rewards weren’t enough to motivate you to continue doing that good stuff, and you prioritised other stuff over the top of this good stuff. We’ve been there, and we noticed that we started to feel disconnected and isolated without these relationships. We lost our resilience, got tired and stressed more easily, and generally, felt like the crap was really starting to pile up.

So here’s the pitch - Why not use the same principle of reward and motivation, and reward people for the good stuff they do? They do it, they like it and we’re reasonably sure they’ll do more of it if they’re given an incentive to do so.

The Objective

At Project LAY, we think you should be more concerned with the quality of your relationships than the quantity (Tell me more about how much real, long-term fulfilment you get out of your 2,000+ Facebook friends…).

Members are asked to select a maximum of 10 friends (“Heroes”) with whom they derive a source of energy and fulfilment. Members then earn points for every interaction they have with their Heroes via Facebook and mobile phone records, and can manually log data for offline interactions (e.g. “Met Alex for a random drink after work”). Then, every month, Members can convert their points into entries in a competition to win a $1,000 Visa card – the more points Members earn, the more chances they have to win.

Ultimately, Members should be able to spend their points in an online rewards store (think Frequent Flyers meets eBay…), but for this controlled-launch phase of the business, we’re using a $1,000 Visa card as the incentive.

If the controlled-launch is successful, we will look to expand not only into an online rewards store, but also into other areas where people should be incentivised for doing things that give them energy and fulfilment (e.g. drinking 6 glasses of water and getting 7-8 hours of sleep per day; eating the “right” foods every day; other good stuff we know we should do because it makes us feel good, but for which we can sometimes not do because of the other crap; etc.). In the meantime, we see social inclusiveness and emotional health as the area where we can make the most impact with our points-for-behaviour model. If it goes off and people in our controlled-launch like it, we would then look to government and private sector parties to help fund a full blown version of the site, and help more people see the benefit in prioritising their good stuff over the other crap.

No hidden charges, no sneaky membership fees, no points-for-purchase, no invasions of privacy, and definitely no selling of your personal data to any third parties (We nearly spat our peas the first time we took a phone call from a guy who said “We see you once read a magazine about ducks in 1998. Would you be interested in buying a set of encyclopaedias?”). It’s your life, and we think you should be rewarded for living it, without worrying about how that data is going to be used against you.

So what’s in it for us? Well, apart from the warm-and-fuzzy feeling we think we’ll get from helping national depression and mental health initiatives, we’re hoping to earn a little bit of money in banner advertising to keep the lights on and the wheels turning in this program. We know there’s not a lot of money in this, but hey, if we get feedback that we helped someone reconnect with their loved ones, or save a marriage, or stay healthy and resilient in the face of a stressful experience, that’s enough for us.

The controlled launch

We have a lot to build and test before we can afford to take LAY to the Australian public – our website, mobile integration, server load bearing capabilities, logo and language, and the whole model itself for that matter – so our test market as part of our go-live plan is 1,000-2,000 uni students at a single Sydney-based university campus. We’ll launch the program during university O-week in February, run it for a month, draw the competition, award the prize, and then pull the site down to analyse how we did.

The reason we chose to target uni students for the controlled launch, apart from their amazing ability to think laterally, adopt new technologies easily and share their feedback candidly, is because of the turbulent, sometime stressful environment in which uni students tend to operate. We hope students will see this as a way of making sure they hold onto those people who are important to them (e.g. family and old school friends) as they navigate the stress and conflicting priorities that come with transitioning into uni life. And we’re hoping that students can also spread the word amongst their peers, pass it around like a puppy at a primary school, and help us build enough scale to see how popular this thing would be if we opened it up to everybody.

The story so far

- We're on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube! Hurrah! We'll be using all of these snazzy social networks to keep posting updates on our progress, and anything else we find on the interwebs which we think is pretty cool and related to what we're trying to achieve.

- We've developed some wireframes that we're quietly very proud of, and are getting very close to engaging contractors to build the site for us (if you're technically minded and would like to get involved please give us a shout)

This is where you come in...

Of course, even just launching the site in a test scenario is still an expensive endeavour – there’s servers to rent, sites, API and databases to build and test, and a $1,000 competition to run. So we’re passing the hat around amongst you good people of The Internets to help us get our baby up and walking.

We have nothing to offer you but our love....

And the opportunity to be a Member alongside our test group of uni students for our launch...

...and some other cool stuff (check out the right hand side of this page!).

In exchange for a measly contribution of $10, we’d love to give you, the donor, the chance to test-drive our little corner of the web. Connect your Facebook, connect your mobile, call your Mum so often she may think you’re having a quarter-/mid-life crisis, go into the draw to win a grand, and maybe, just maybe, have the opportunity to say “I helped those guys get started!”

Feedback is always welcome. Like, follow, subscribe, or just smile and nod to us in the street – it’s all good, and it’s all very encouraging.

Cheers,

The LAY Men (and Woman).