Take Back Your Time
General Theory
Notifications steal my attention, time, and productivity. There are direct notifications like desktop alerts in Outlook (e.g. email, appointment reminders) or more subtle ones like badge icons on your mobile device (e.g. unread text messages). If you're anything like me, you like have clean inboxes - email, texts, app updates, etc.
These notifications can at times distract the hell out of me. Rather than develop the discipline to ignore them, I programmed them out of my life.
How I Did (Do) It
A few years ago, I felt overwhelmed with the amount of email I was receiving. At the time I was a VP at ClearView Energy Partners, with primary coverage of biofuels, international climate policy, and a few regional climate programs. I also provided secondary coverage of or support for other topics, including geopolitics (primarily Middle East and North Africa), U.S. tax policy, and energy market fundamentals. I was receiving between 200-400 emails per day, 90% of them being newsletter-type emails or alerts that I could have ignored. (In retrospect, 90% of those 90% of emails were probably useless, so I could have unsubscribed to them, solving the bulk of this issue, but then I couldn't have written this amazing blog post.)
I couldn't ignore them, though. I felt compelled to get my "inbox to zero." Part of the problem was the desktop notification that popped up with each incoming email. The first step was to turn those off. Great, except that I began to ignore urgent messages from clients or colleagues. I needed a better process.
I had already created several folders and rules to automatically move certain emails to different folders. I went thru each of those rules and turned off those notifications, not all. Okay, now I could feel my productivity growing... I wasn't being bombarded with "URGENT: SOME CRAZY EVENT IS HAPPENING NOW" clickbait headlines every 15 seconds anymore.
That didn't entirely alleviate the compulsion to get the inbox to zero. If only there were a way to remove that magnetic, bolded unread message count. It turns out you can change the unread count to a total count. It took some getting used to the new appearance ("What, I have 25,782 unread messages?!"), but eventually I could finally let go of getting my inbox to zero, particularly for the less important messages.
I wrote the bulk of the content for this blog post in an email to a friend back then, applying primarily to my professional life. I have carried over this methodology to my smart phone use and personal life. The same sort of issues applied: I saw the unread number - for emails, texts, updates - and I didn't want to see it there. I turned off (a) the badge icons; and (b) notifications.
On my iPhone, I went to Settings > Notifications. I then went thru each app in descending order of volume (mail, texts, and then I don't remember). I turned off sound alerts (no noise or vibration), and switched off the badge icon. Now, I make sure to turn off notifications whenever I install a new app.
I didn't turn off "Lock Screen" alerts. These days, I'm able to consciously ignore those alerts, even as I look at my phone while locked, like if I'm checking the time. It helped that I turned off "Show Previews." That's actually the first option in Settings > Notifications.
Successes and Failures
I will go days without checking emails or texts; meaning, I will go days without responding to messages from family or friends, or otherwise important communication. Generally, I have not ignored important stuff too frequently as the truly important things tend to warrant phone calls. I answer phone calls and check voicemails most of the time because they are so few.
From the Pros
Sam Harris's podcast with Tristan Harris (not related) inspired me to put my thoughts down on "paper." From the podcast link, Sam Harris describes the talk as a conversation about "the arms race for human attention, the ethics of persuasion, the consequences of having an ad-based economy, the dynamics of regret, and other topics."
TH: […B]ecause of how frequently people turn to their phone, you’re essentially scheduling these little blocks of people’s time… If I immediately notify you for every Snapchat message … when you see a message from a friend in that moment urgently … that will cause a lot of people to go swipe over in and not just see that message but then get sucked into all the other stuff that they’ve been hiding for you… and that’s all very deliberate...
SH: You’re clearly concerned about time as we all should be, it’s the one non-renewable resource, it’s the one thing we can’t possibly get back any of no matter what other resources we marshal, and it’s clear that our technology, especially smart phone-based technology, is just a kind of bottomless sink of time and attention.