Frequently Asked Questions

How does Emile work?

Emile is a chatbot that helps you get to bed earlier by helping you set weekly achievable bedtime goals. When you join, you tell Emile your current bedtime as well as your ideal bedtime. From there, Emile proposes a weekly bedtime goal built around your current bedtime. For example, if you’ve been getting to bed at around midnight, your first goal on Emile might be to get bed by 11:45pm at least 3 times.

How does Emile help me get to bed earlier?

Imagine you told your friend or hired an assistant and told them “Hey, I really want you to keep me accountable to getting to bed by 11:45pm three times this week. Can you text me and keep me on top of that?” That’s basically how Emile works. Each night, you get a message from Emile reminding you about your bedtime. The next day, Emile checks in with you to ask you if you got to bed on time (honor system!). Emile’s responses are tailored to your progress— if you’re doing well toward your goal, Emile will encourage you. If you’re slipping, Emile will encourage you and ask you what caused you to miss your bedtime (for future reference). Emile creates a conversation about your bedtime. Once your bedtime becomes part of a conversation, it becomes much easier to become intentional about it and start working toward getting to bed a little bit earlier every week.

How is Emile different from other sleep trackers?

Most sleep trackers tell you you’re not getting enough sleep while stopping short of proposing a solution. I should know, I’ve tried a lot of them! I was always stumped by the obvious question when confronted by not getting enough sleep— “now what??” Emile gives you a framework for actually changing your sleep, gradually, week by week with achievable goals.

I want to go to bed at 10pm, why Emile is trying to make me set a goal for way later than that?

Funny you should ask. Emile didn’t always used to be that way. Earlier versions of Emile had users setting their own goals. Guess what happened: they failed— a lot. Way too much. And then they stopped using Emile because it didn’t work. It turns out that when left to their own devices, folks are way too optimistic about the difficulty of goals they can achieve in the short run. Maybe you’re the exception— which is why Emile does allow for the option of setting custom goals. They just aren’t the default.

My first week’s goal feels too easy!

When we are in the part of the customer journey where we are trying out new products and apps, it represents the time in our habit journey when we are most engaged and motivated. However, what is hard to realize is that what we should actually be shopping for is a product that will continue to be useful once the motivation and engagement has returned to normal levels. We like to think Emile is more designed with this in mind-- so we don't throw too much at the user at first, and gradually introduce more challenging goals later, once they've proven they can stick with the easier goals.

Is Emile available without a North American Phone Number?

Yes! If you sign up with a non-US number, Emile will message you via WhatsApp! It’s still in beta mode, but if you sign up with an international number and it doesn’t work, don’t hesitate to reach out via our contact form.

Who are you?

Emile was created by Nazlı and Charlie, two founders who met through Venture for America.

Where can I do a deeper dive?

Check out Charlie’s reddit post here.

Does Emile offer wakeup goals?

Way back in the day we did indeed have wakeup goals in addition to bedtime goals. However, whereas encouraging earlier bedtimes helped users get more sleep, we found that wakeup goals could end up unhealthily encouraging users to get less sleep than their body actually needed. (Especially since the main reason folks were citing for missing their wakeup goal was 'too tired' or 'went to bed too late').

In the end, we felt much more comfortable doubling down on bedtime goals, since we saw firsthand how getting to bed earlier was the primary way to healthily encourage earlier wakeups.