Notifications serve the interests of whoever controls them. That whoever can be us, if we change them from their defaults. These are steps I think everyone ought to take.
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Disable almost all smart watch notifications.
I see people all the time with Slack or Gmail tapping their wrist — the signal/noise ratio is way too low to allow this level of interruption. Even texts are not worth it: if the medium is inherently asynchronous, be ok with that.
Which ones are actually good on the watch?
- Real-time, intentional interruptions like well-curated calendar alerts
- Context-relevant suggestions like workout intervals and turn-by-turn directions
Everything else: prohibit.
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Turn off notifications for the news.
I can’t believe people tolerate CNN pushing alerts to their phone. Unless you’re in a very specific profession, nothing good can come from this. I am told that some people actually send these to their smart watch.
Deranged.
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Aggressively filter emails.
Categorization by computer saves precious human attention. Anything that doesn’t require an action should be filtered out or deleted. You can create long filters that relegate messages like terms of service updates, receipts, paperless billing statements, and delivery order notifications into a folder that you never need to see (unless you’re looking for it). You control where these needy messages go, and they can’t do anything about it.
Do not let fear prevent you from filtering work emails. Good filters help you focus more on the important things, and if your filter does misfire the restitution is the most banal apology on earth: “oh sorry, I didn’t see that email”. You’re saying it anyway, so put it to work for you. You can also write filters to mark some emails as high priority if you’re worried about false positives from e.g. bosses and clients.
Filters from my personal Fastmail account
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Allow an app to have notification privileges only as long as it has a 100% hit rate.
The first time you get an unwanted notification, go try and turn off notifications of that type. If the app doesn’t allow you to discriminate between useful and useless messages, permanently disable them all.
This means I have prohibited notification permission to apps like Grubhub, Uber, all airline apps, all bank apps, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, grocery delivery, Newegg, and more. These apps sometimes have useful notifications I want, but if they are also sending me marketing messages or engagement bait, they lose the privilege forever.
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The basics:
- Unsubscribe from text and email marketing whenever it appears.
- Get a spam call/text blocker like Nomorobo.
Generally, consider whether planning time to pull from a source on your schedule would solve the problem better than letting the source push an interruption to you on its schedule. If, for example, you are cursed by god with a professional need to stay on top of the news every day, try blocking time to spend on just that. Or if you there are email newsletters you want to receive, send them to a feed reader like Feedbin which you open at the right time for you. This protects your focus.
At the beginning, it seems like taking control of the deluge will never help — maybe you’re somehow signing up for marketing lists faster than you can click unsubscribe. It does add up, though, and it will pay off in a few weeks. It’s tempting to use a Sisyphean metaphor for this, but I think it’s actually more like cleaning your house. Entropy comes for us all in the end, but it is worth pushing against it while we have to live here.