As this sentence was being written, about a dozen notifications just happened.
We’ve come to take for granted that our ever-smarter tools (phones, computers, email) and even those with modern brain transplants (TVs, refrigerators, cars) are telling us stuff all the time. Honestly, you can’t shut them up.
If you wanted to lump all these messages together, you could just call them “notifications,” which is a catch-all term if you own an Apple or Android phone. In recent years, the way phones and tablets organize all of the alerts and updates from different apps into one neat, front-and-center, at-a-glance display has become a major mobile feature.
Notifications, though, are part of a larger problem: interruptions.
Let’s explore some approaches you can take to taming notifications.
Going cold turkey: This won't stop your car from making you aware of a needed oil change or your cable company's DVR from alerting you to a lack of hard-drive space, but on your more personal digital devices (phones, computers, tablets) you could consider turning off notifications entirely and seeing whether it brings you peace of mind.
On Windows PCs, Macs, iOS, Android and other mobile devices and on social networks, your settings or control panels will have an option for turning off notifications. On most recent smartphones, you can go in and control notifications for individual apps and how they appear on your main screen. You may decide as you go to re-enable notifications to bring back only the ones you need, but wiping the slate clean and living that way for a few days may be a good place to start.
Hitting the worst offenders first: Maybe you're fine with some notifications, but you've noticed others dominate your day, such as reminders of new emails or a calendar app that blasts a ringtone when an appointment arrives. Get rid of the most frequent, annoying offenders and see if that improves your life.
Cutting devices from the loop: You may need constant alerts and reminders if you lead a fast-charging, busy life, but you may not need to see the same notifications on all your devices all the time. If you're a heavy Mac/iPhone user, for instance, you may find yourself seeing the same notifications on your computer, phone, tablet and, if you have one, Apple Watch. You could cut the iPad out of that cycle if it's not a device you frequently use all day.
Seasonal adjustments: It may take a little more effort, but handling notifications in a situational way has its advantages. For instance, you could only shut off notifications when you're on vacation or on weekends. You could add notifications that are reliant on location (these are called "geolocation" or "geofenced" alerts) when you're traveling to tell you when you're near a popular attraction or historical landmark.
It may be that you want shopping-related notifications before the holidays but won’t be able to stand them after New Year’s Day. Riding the wave of life events, holidays and shifting needs is a way to stay ahead of notification overload.
Keep them on: We may be overconnected and mega-notified, but maybe that's just the new norm. Keeping all notifications on could potentially enrich your life, making it more likely that you'll answer errant email messages and that you won't miss an impromptu Periscope broadcast from a close friend before it disappears.
A person who is good at tuning out information, or at least with enough impulse control to glance at a list of alerts and only act on the important ones, may be perfectly Zen in notification hell.
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