There are things bombarding our ears all the time as humans: drills, lawnmowers, sirens, subwoofers, kids screaming, spouses telling us about their day, co-workers asking for help, and bosses checking in on our progress. One thing we don't need, is our phones and computers dinging at us 63 times a day. And that number is just the average. A study I found stated, "...our participants had to deal with 63.5 notifications on average per day, mostly from messengers and email." That's a lot of distractions in a day. So what can you do about it?
Well, you can start by turning off all the unnecessary notifications and making the necessary ones less intrusive:
Take inventory: Open your phone and take inventory of what notifications you have currently. How necessary and unnecessary are most of them? Do you even need those apps to notify you?
Turn off: Then go into your notification settings and turn off notifications for all the apps you do not need any notifications for.
Settings within apps: Look through all the apps where notifications are still on. For each, open it and look at all the different individual notification settings within an app you can turn on and off. Maybe you need notifications from the messaging part of a social media app, but not from the general activity within the platform. Turn off everything but the one you need.
Alert Types: Check for how the notifications will alert you. You can probably turn off the LED indicator. You don't need your phone flashing you every time you get a notification. Also I recommend you turn off your App icon badges. These are the little buggers that force any self proclaimed OCD person to open each app and get rid of that number next to the app icons. Decide if you want a ding, a buzz, a pop up bar, or a combination of these. Under my sounds and vibrations settings I can turn off all sound for notifications even when my general system sound is on. That way I still get a buzz for a text but I won't get a ding. But my phone still rings when I get a call. Play around with your settings and see what you can do to make your notifications work best for you.
Do not disturb: I recommend you turn on a do not disturb schedule. On my phone, do not disturb automatically comes on at 11:15 PM and goes off at 5:15 AM. I have calls as an exception so if there is an emergency someone can call me. However, this setting is a bit irrelevant for me now, because recently I have been putting my phone on airplane mode or turning it off about 30 min before I go to bed. Your notifications should not interrupt your day life or your sleep life.
Other settings: Check any other notification settings I may have missed for your device. If there is anything else you can do to make your life less bombarded, do it.
Repeat: Now, repeat this process for any other devices like your computer, smart TV, tablet, or mp3 player. The process will be a bit different. But don't forget these because those notifications interrupt your life too.
Where: As you're doing this, think about if you want notifications for a specific thing on one or more than one device. For example, my phone does not notify me when I get any emails because I check my emails on the computer. So make sure you get the notifications you want, where you want them.
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