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Modern technology is similar to getting a puppy or having a baby. If you don’t train it, it will soon train you. We probably all know who’s whipped whom into shape when it comes to the tirade of bleeps and screen notification that distract us from work and interrupt attempts to relax in the evening.
A Telefonica study estimates the average smartphone users gets as many as 63.5 notifications per day, and many of them are simply not useful.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. While we’ll never be completely free from people and apps grabbing our attention, we can at least take control of the notifications that drive us all to distraction.
1. Delete (almost) everything
To combat the creep of endless alerts, go into the notifications section of your smartphone or computer and turn off prompts from apps you really do not need to hear from. Be ruthless. Do you really need to know if a tube line you don’t use has a good service, do you care if a retailer you haven’t shopped with for at least a year has a sale?
Another option is to manage notifications as they come in. By holding down each pushed message a menu is opened up which allows further notifications to be blocked or made to at least arrive silently.
2. Cut off social media
Let’s be honest, not all notifications are from business contacts or your boss with an urgent request. Most of us have plenty of nudges throughout the day to say someone liked our picture of breakfast on social media.
There are some obvious steps here. If responding to a popular feed on Facebook, for instance, click top right on the post’s dotted lines to turn off notifications for the post. This same trick can be used to turn off notifications for a busy page. Instagram gives you similar features to mute notifications for certain types of post or turn them off all together.
Twitter also lets you turn off notifications from people you don’t follow, don’t follow you, or who have just set up an account or have a generic picture, suggesting it could be spam. Follow the steps here.
It isn’t perfect, but you may want to try altering notification filter settings before deciding whether it’s time to go the full hog and turn off social notifications altogether.
3. Do not disturb
That feature in the settings menu on your Apple or Android phone isn’t just there to help with sleep. It’s an invaluable tool for blocking calls and notifications when you really have to finish off a piece of work and can be set to switch off after a set period of time.
If you start selecting ‘do not disturb’ as a routine way to get more done, it might be a good idea to ‘star’ any contacts you would likely want to hear from. The feature can then be set up to allow calls from these A listers while calls from others are barred.
4. Organise, then give yourself a badge
These are three main choices for how an app can grab your attention, and all too often we allow them onto our phone or computer screen without thinking too hard about the right setting.
A sound obviously makes a bleep, while a banner will appear as a notification at the top of the screen. But the badge is best way to go to avoid distraction, appearing as a number on the top right-hand corner of an app’s icon, like a counter on an email app.
An extra top tip is to organise important apps onto your phone’s home screen. That way you don’t have to scroll around looking to see if there are notifications, they will be evident at first glance.
5. Mute your colleagues
Instant messenger-based productivity tools – think Slack, Microsoft Teams and Facebook Workplace – are the prime offenders when it comes to sapping away attention during the day, particularly when they are set up with large groups to discuss a project, and binge-worth Netflix box sets.
Fortunately, their makers do seem to be far more aware of this than those behind the email inbox they all generally claim to be slaying. As such, there are usually several options to curtail notifications. These will vary but will generally allow users to select which conversations should be starred as important and which can be muted. They will also allow for notifications for all conversations, or some, to be switched off for however long the person requires to get some work done.
6. Set emails to your rhythm
Managing email is one of the simplest steps anyone can take to cut down on constant notifications. Instead of having refresh email every few minutes, or use default settings, go into send/receive setting and opt for a longer period.
General health and safety advice recommends a ten minute break to be taken from a computer every hour, so the ideal setting might be to receive messages once per hour at the end or beginning of a 45 to 50 minute session in front of the screen.
But many productive workers swear by cutting this time in half and setting notifications for every half hour, allowing 25 minutes work to be done before emails are looked at and acted on. Remember, if you’re desperate to check if a reply to an email has come in, you can still manually hit send/receive.
7. Go grey or find an elastic band
One tip that has done the rounds over the past couple of years comes from former Google exec Tristan Harris, who set up a non-for-profit organisation Time Well Spent. It is dedicated to combating phone addiction, and he swears by an unusual method of weaning himself off of phone notifications: turning your homepage grey.
By going to your phone’s accessibility settings and selecting grey scale apps look less appealing, so you are less like to check them out, he says. What’s more, those badges on apps look a lot less eye-catching too.
And if you have managed notifications but still find yourself constantly reaching for the phone, consider this trick from business coach Emma Jefferys. Tie an elastic band around your handset and place it screen down on the desk. Then, each time you reach for it the unusual texture will remind of that promise not to keep checking. Sounds odd, but she swears by it.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
