I have shared in other articles how my mind gets scattered easily and the measures I've put in place to bring some structure to my life. But even with all that in place, there is one thing that could render it all useless...
I am talking about Notifications - Push notifications specifically. Those pesky little things that seem to know exactly when you're trying to be focused. Useful as they might be, some of them take it a bit too far.
We live in a world where our devices are an extension of us. As such, we exist at their mercy. Live at the whims of whatever new thing pops up on our screens. The problem with that is the more you give in to your device, give in to every notification that flashes, the more you get less done.
It's a catch 22 where we want to know what's happening and we also don't want to be taken from what we have to do.
We’re already cyborgs. Your phone and your computer are extensions of you, but the interface is through finger movements or speech, which are very slow.
— Elon Musk
Hope is not lost though. There are ways you can gain control over your device and the notifications that come with it:
- Choose which notifications you receive - Believe it or not, you can decide which notifications you get from whatever service/app. 2. Opt-out of notifications - Most services offer the option to opt-out of notifications. This way you don't have to deal with them at all.
- Uninstall apps you don't use - Admit it, there is an app on your phone that you haven't used in a week, maybe months. How about getting rid of it and its notifications?
How Do I Battle The Enemy?
For me that's in two main parts:
- Self Control: If I am working my phone is in another place entirely, far from reach.
- Switching Them Off: I turn them off - all of them, every single one. For whatever period of time I have planned to be productive, I turn them off.
It has to be a combination of 1 and 2. With them in place, the only thing I have to deal with is my thoughts and what task I have to accomplish.
Our devices may be a part of us, we are not slaves to them - not yet anyway.
The articles I mentioned:
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