Notification Withdrawal
In todays society it’s hard to stay focused.
On every corner sits and waits a new piece of information to be picked up and processed. Whether its a text message from a friend, a dreadful international sensation, an email from your boss, the weather forecast for tomorrow or the latest updates from your favorite sports team. Keeping ourselves up to date with todays variety of events has never been easier. Notifications are delivered to our devices almost in an instant within occurrence and with the tap of a finger we can watch, read and listen about whatever just happened.
But what do we gain from those instant updates?
In my opinion, nothing. We only lose something, our focus.
By letting notifications pop up at every possible time we let other people and companies tell us what to do and how to behave at any given time during our day. Instead to do the things we ought to do we let those third parties disrupt us. And in some way control us. I’m not a fan of being controlled.
So let’s try out an experiment, shall we?
Open up your settings on each of your devices (mobile and desktop) and do the following things:
- Remove all apps from your notifications settings which aren’t essential for your survival
- Turn off all vibrations / sounds for every single notification and incoming calls (unless your survival depends on picking up the phone)
- Do not change those settings until you think you missed out on something important (which probably will never happen)
In the beginning this notification withdrawal will feel weird. But sooner than later it will go away. You will start to look up the necessary things when it’s necessary. The unnecessary will be forgotten. No more frightening news reports or time wasting Free2Play games which disrupt your focus and make you feel bad. It’s amazing to be able to focus on something for more than 10 minutes without being interrupted.
Congratulations. You just made your life a little less distracting. Your focus will thank you later.
