Getting distracted by notifications

productivity advice

26 June 2024 | 4 min read

You're not missing anything, regain your focus.

You’re sitting at your desk working on an important project that is due tomorrow.

You’ve been struggling all evening to make progress and your focus is not where it should be.

Ding

An Amazon notification reminding you of that upcoming sale. You don’t really need anything but hey - can’t hurt to check if anything interesting is on sale.

5 minutes into doom scrolling the marketplace you realise it.

Damn.

You got distracted again. Where were you?

That project, right.

This cycle repeats itself many times throughout the day and there’s nothing you can do about it, right?

…

Obviously that’s a lie you tell yourself.

A lie to mask the fact that you’re experiencing major FOMO when you think about deleting social media apps and turning off notifications for apps.

But what if I tell you that it’s not as bad as you think it is and that you will NOT miss out but rather experience more.

Let me elaborate on the above and tell you about the system I’ve put in place for myself.

By reducing the amount of noise cluttering your home screen you’ll reduce the amount of noise cluttering your mind and therefore open up valuable mental resources which can then be used to concentrate on what’s truly important to you.

You’ll be more focused, calm and aware of your surroundings while being present in the moment. Friends and family will notice you being more engaged in conversations and you’ll be able to support your spouse or partner better than ever by noticing little details.

Becoming bored is the first step to becoming excited about life.

So how do you start?

First of all trust me on this:

Social media will continue with or without you, sales will come and go and if you miss one you’ll catch the next and most importantly -

No one online gives a fuck about you but the people in your close proximity do.

Knowing this here’s your game plan:

  1. Delete social media APPS. Not accounts. By making it harder to access these platforms you’ll spend less time on them. Your ultimate goal should be to completely avoid them or only check your messages but not your feed. The biggest win you’re making with this step is abandoning the countless notifications you’re getting. Your phone is gonna get real quiet and you’re going to love it - trust me.

  2. Disable notifications for all apps that you never check anyways or that shouldn’t notify you. That marketplace that runs sales every 2 hours that you visited last 6 months ago? You don’t need that on your home screen. Several other apps as well. They’re just killing your focus and you delete the notification anyways.

  3. Group notifications that are not urgent (emails especially) and let them be delivered 3 times a day: Never in the morning, your phone should be clean in the morning. Around your lunch break which is 1pm for me. In the evening when you’re most likely done with work, gym, etc. around 7pm for me and an hour before bed. If you ever get more than 5 notifications in a batch you probably need to revisit your notification settings, newsletter subscriptions or in-app notification settings.

  4. Doom scrolling social media is a no-no. You can post and check messages (no TikTok’s or reels). Of course all of that in a browser and not a dedicated app. You’ll hate the experience so much that you’ll be happy to drop it completely.

  5. Your phone stays on your nightstand. Your mind should be clear before bed, your notification count 0. No screens. Reading a physical book is fine. Kindle if you prefer that but you should give books a try. Nice feeling of progress while reading and you’ll have a nice book shelve one day to look at all the books you read.

Not much more than that. This isn’t even hard because at this point you’ve set up your digital environment to win. Not much willpower needed here and consistency will kick in itself because of the systems you’ve put in place.

I hope this helps.