The notifications I wish I'd turned off sooner

Putting the NO in notifications on my phone

Perhaps the most productive thing I ever did for my career was to ignore my colleagues more effectively. It began with questioning why my phone needed to buzz every time someone had a thought.

I believe our phones should have almost no notifications at all. When I’m at home, I often keep my phone in do-not-disturb mode, which lets calls through but not much else. Since rarely more than 30 minutes go by without me looking at my phone, it’s unlikely I’ll miss anything time-sensitive. However, I’ve come to realise that some notifications, whether muted or not, have no business being on my phone at all.

Mail apps 📨

It all started with disabling email notifications.

Why I thought I needed it

At the time, I was leading a product organisation of around 40 engineers, designers, analysts, and product managers. I’d receive emails from the team with status updates, critical issues, blockers, and requests from our C-level or fellow executives.

Why I didn’t need it

I came to realise that important doesn’t mean urgent. Receiving notifications for important emails would disrupt my attention and decrease the quality of my focus and work. In any case, I would usually check my email throughout the day and immediately after meetings, so nothing would go unnoticed for too long.

What happened

Nothing bad. Maybe I missed the opportunity to jump into a discussion on an email thread at a favourable point, but what does that really matter in the grand scheme of things? Sustained quality, focus, and mental well-being are far more important.

Exceptions

Occasionally, when I attend conferences, I enable notifications in case I receive last-minute emails to coordinate or reschedule meetings. However, I may also use an auto-response telling recipients to send me a text message instead.

Slack / Teams / Etc. 💼

These workplace communication tools can get super noisy. Own them or they end up owning you.

Why I thought I needed it

Many organisations expect that you can instantly alert someone by tagging or direct messaging them on Slack. I don’t think this is healthy, as Slack doesn’t discriminate between “hey, could you send me an update on this project by the end of the week” or “hey, the service is down and needs fixing NOW!”

For this reason, I thought it was both scary and important to disable my mobile phone notifications for Slack. Scary because there was an expectation it could be used for urgent communication, and important because notifications treat all communication as urgent and worth interrupting you for.

Why I didn’t need it

I spoke to colleagues and other managers about this, and there was a consensus that people should be able to focus and thus not respond to everything immediately.

If something is truly urgent, you will receive a phone call or text message if you don’t reply to a Slack message.

What happened

Life improved straight away. I still had Slack on my phone and would check it occasionally, but mostly I went without Slack interruptions unless I was at my desk. If I needed focus time while at my desk, I’d use Slack’s built-in do-not-disturb feature, which also shows other users of the workspace that I won’t be notified.

These notifications were scarier to disable on my phone than email, but had an even bigger positive impact and no downside at all.

Exceptions

Zero. Though I wish I could greenlight mobile notifications with super-specific criteria. Again, it depends on the company culture too, and being senior, I’m usually in a position of privilege where I can ‘get away’ with things like this. Having said that, I’d gently bend non-sensical rules well before I was in senior positions in order to force a discussion about their efficacy.

LinkedIn & social apps without DM functionality 👨‍💻

Instagram is the only social media platform from which I receive mobile notifications. Not for likes on posts, but for the DMs. In my circles, the most common way to stay in touch after meeting is by following each other on IG, so some notifications there might become time-sensitive (though a heads up for friends: find another way to contact me, as I’ve currently disabled my personal profile). Twitter also used to have an element of this, but then it got captured by fascists, so I’ve deleted my profile and data.

On to the topic of mobile LinkedIn notifications…

Why I thought I needed it

Who knows. Perhaps it made me feel important in the early days of my career, and that the velocity of expanding my online network was so crucial that I needed immediate updates, which would interrupt whatever I was focusing on.

Why I didn’t need it

I mean, it’s LinkedIn… I don’t need to be interrupted to learn what leadership lessons Dave from marketing learned from his dog’s enema.

(No offence meant to any Daves who work in marketing)

What happened

Nothing at all. No more interruptions from LinkedIn while I’m trying to do things that actually benefit my career, like writing this newsletter.

Exceptions

None. I might check it a couple of times a day while I’m at a conference (for the same reason as enabling email notifications), but if people have anything time-sensitive to communicate that can’t wait a day, they’re shit out of luck (usually less than a day, by the way, since I check my email more often and LinkedIn sends email notifications).

News apps 📰

Why I thought I needed it

I studied Communication. During my first year of studies, I learned to scan and compare various newspapers daily. Receiving notifications for relevant and important news seemed like a great deal.

Why I didn’t need it

It’s not 2005 anymore. You don’t have to make an effort to get updates about what’s going on in the world. It will find you on social media, on YouTube, and you’re never more than 1-2 seconds away from knowing the latest news when you grab your phone. No waiting for the evening news, no waiting for tomorrow’s newspaper.

In general, the amount of information that finds its way into our heads has increased manifold, so I read the news when I choose to, and not when it demands to be read based on some engagement-pumping algorithm.

What happened

I may find out about world politics about 10 minutes later than my most stressed-out acquaintances.

Exceptions

In case of an actual crisis, the government can send an alert message to my phone, so I guess there’s that.

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3 principles for mobile notifications 📓

I have a simple mental framework for this.

1) Are these interruptions so valuable that they merit regular interruption of focus?

I find it hard to answer this question with yes for almost anything. In fact, I keep my phone in various do-not-disturb modes for large parts of the day.

One way to review this is by considering where most notifications fall in a priority matrix:

Using this, you can see what notifications are actually important to you.

• 4) Not urgent and not important.

• 3) Urgent, but not important. For example: “ready to go for lunch?”, “@channel does anyone have a charger?” These do not need to interrupt focused moments. For example, the lunch notification can wait until you’re done, because if you’d be ready, you’d probably be looking at Slack anyway. You’ll be ready faster if you just focus for a moment.

• 2) Important, but not urgent.

• 1) Urgent and important. These, I would say, might warrant interruptions, but it still depends exactly how urgent and important they are.

2) If it’s actually urgent, they will call.

The actually urgent stuff will find its way to you. Everything else may be time-sensitive, but not that time-sensitive to warrant immediate interruption.

3) Consider what you already do that makes notifications redundant.

I realised I checked my mail countless times per day, so I didn’t need notifications for it. For Slack, because I get notifications while I’m on my laptop, I realised I didn’t need mobile notifications.

If you’re on WhatsApp 20 times per day anyway, do you really need notifications for every group you’re in?

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(- ‿- ) For your ears

British producer Djrum’s music is my go-to for when I’m looking for somewhat cinematic musical journeys that are rooted in one of my most familiar spaces: dancefloors. His latest album, released last April, does a phenomenal job at this and was composed and produced by him over the course of 6 years. On it, he plays piano, harp, mbira, and percussion. I use the word ‘journey’ sparingly when it comes to albums, but it absolutely fits Under Tangled Silence. Enjoy.