Two Percent Holiday Screen Time Challenge

This is your chance to get your attention back.

Today, we’re announcing the free Two Percent Holiday Screen Time Challenge.

We’re partnering with Clearspace for the challenge. It’s the best app I’ve found for eliminating digital distraction and helping us get our time and attention back.

It’ll help us spend less time on our phones around the holidays—so we can be present with the people we love.

What’s more, this challenge will also help us be more active: We’ll earn screen time by doing pushups or squats.

For those of you who have previously tried and failed to reduce your screen time, this is a great time to give it another try. We’re leveraging a science-based approach that’ll also get you more active.

Quick housekeeping

• This post, like all Monday posts, is free. But only Members get full access to all three weekly Two Percent posts and our full archive. Join us:

• In case you missed it:

  • On Wednesday, we looked at Trump’s $1 billion bet to make airports healthier. Is it good policy or just political theater?

  • On Friday, we ran a Burn the Ships that’ll help you stay fit over the hectic holidays. It takes less than 30 minutes and you can do it with any equipment.

Thanks to our partners:

• 🚨 New partner alert: Montana Knife Company. I’ve been carrying MKC knives into the wilderness for a few years. They’re bombproof, razor sharp out of the box, and made in Montana. My everyday carry: The Mini Speedgoat 2.0. Check them out here and mention you heard about MKC from Two Percent.

• Maui Nui: Give the gift of good nutrition. Maui Nui’s gift sets are beautifully packaged and made from ethically sourced, nutrient-dense venison. Try the Stick Starter 6-Pack at $39 each. High-protein, low-calorie, and wildly clean.

• GOREWEAR. I used GOREWEAR gear on a run this weekend. Specifically, the CONCURVE 2-in-1 Shorts. EASTER gets you 30% off your first GOREWEAR purchase. It’s pure Gear Not Stuff.

Here’s how to join the free challenge:

Step 1: Download Clearspace

Grab your phone, download the Clearspace app, and create an account. Use this button to download Clearspace onto your iOS or Android device:

You’ll do a quick onboarding. This involves answering a few questions, giving Clearspace screen time and notifications access (it only notifies you when you try to open an app you chose to limit).

Clearspace will also ask if you want to upgrade to paid—“skip” is at the top right of that screen.

Step 2: Choose the apps you want to limit

Select the apps you want to use less. You’ll earn time on these apps with exercise for the rest of the year.

For example, if you find yourself using Twitter and email too often, select Twitter and your email app.

Step 3: Join the Two Percent Screen Time Pushup/Squat Challenge

Once you download the app, choose which difficulty level you want. Click the button to join that group.

• Easy: 1 pushup or squat earns you 3 minutes of screen time.

• Medium: 1 pushup or squat earns you 1 minute of screen time.

• Hard: 3 pushups or squats earn you 1 minute of screen time.

Note, if for any reason the button doesn’t take you to your group, just select the Challenge tab in Clearspace and enter the following code for each group.

• Easy: 2PCT01

• Medium: 2PCT02

• Hard: 2PCT03

You’ll also choose your name for the leaderboard.

Step 4: Use your phone to record your pushups and squats to earn screen time

When you want to earn time on the app you’ve chosen to limit, you’ll have to do squats or pushups.

Clearspace tracks your reps and gives you minutes. Of course, you’ll have to record your reps for Clearspace to count them.

Don’t worry. Clearspace isn’t saving the video. It disappears after you do your reps.

Here’s a video of me earning my first 7 minutes in my kitchen this morning:

Step 5: Watch the leaderboard

The leaderboard will rank us by the number of minutes we “bank.” That’s the amount of screen time we’ve earned but don’t use.

Example: Let’s say you join the Medium group and do 200 pushups and 200 squats during the challenge. In that group, one pushup or squat is worth one minute. So you’d have accumulated 400 minutes.

But then, over the course of the challenge, let’s say you spend 150 minutes on the apps you’ve chosen to limit.

You’d end up with 250 minutes on the leaderboard at the end of the challenge.

The winner in each group will win a signed copy of my new rucking manual, Walk With Weight, and a Two Percent hat.

Step 6: Invite friends

• If you want friends and family to join this challenge with you (and you should), just forward this email to them. Anyone can join.

• That way, it’s not just you who’s present during the holidays while everyone else is on their phone.

• Not to mention, it’ll get everyone more active.

Step 7: Begin the challenge now

• The challenge officially starts now and runs through the end of the year.

There you have it.

Good luck and godspeed.

Why Clearspace works

We all have an app or two we check too often without thinking. Then, once we’re on the app, we get sucked into doomscrolling and unintentionally lose far too many minutes of our lives.

If you’re a frequent reader of Two Percent, you probably know about the scarcity loop. (If you want a full breakdown of the loop and why it hooks humans, read this post or my book, Scarcity Brain.)

In short: The scarcity loop is the most powerful behavior loop. Nothing is better at grabbing a person’s attention, holding it, and leading them to repeat behaviors they often regret later.

Clearspace “works” by interrupting the scarcity loop. It leverages elegant behavioral science that goes back about a century.

By asking us to do a bit of activity before we can use an app we overuse, we:

1. Earn our screen time with some physical activity.

2. Get more tactical with our screentime. We actually make sure we accomplish what we set out to accomplish by using the app.

3. Don’t get sucked into the vortex of doomscrolling. This improves our life.

Why Clearspace is a sane solution

Rather than methods that ban apps altogether (like getting a dumb phone or deleting apps), Clearspace helps you leverage the good parts of apps and avoid their bad parts.

The apps we get hooked on benefit us—or else we wouldn’t use them. Oliver from Clearspace told me as much:

(The apps we get hooked on) are obviously useful. We wouldn’t all be onboarded to them if they didn’t provide some benefit.

But the downsides are becoming just as obvious and all the low-tech solutions we hear—like get a dumb phone, leave your phone at home, delete apps—are low-tech solutions that ignore the positives that apps can bring.

Take me: Without Clearspace, I find myself on Instagram too often. By using Clearspace, I get more focused with my time on Instagram and use it to respond to DMs from friends I love and to post useful content occasionally.

Oliver continued:

We think technology can be uniquely valuable for separating the utility of apps from their distractions. In other words, we have a high-tech solution to a high-tech problem that helps you get the benefit of apps without their distracting downsides.

This is what I like about Clearspace. I like all the apps on my phone—but I don’t like checking them too often and getting sucked into them.

Especially around the holidays.

Clearspace will allow us to use the apps more intentionally—and also get in a whole hell of a lot of pushups and squats, improving our health.

In other words, Clearspace will help us use apps—not the other way around.

Have fun, don’t die, join the Two Percent Holiday Screen Time Challenge.

-Michael