Technology

Late to the party, then. Most people I know went on silent a decade or more ago.

Oh and while we are at it, notifications are for important things I need to know, not for fucking ads. Any app that uses notifications for ads gets deleted.

I disable notifications for most of my apps anyway, but the neural connections are still there and hard to undo. Breaking them is a long process in my experience... or maybe I reinforce them too much still.

I've been activelly managing my mobile phone pretty much like that since the 90s because after getting my first mobile phone I quickly figured out that if allowed to the thing just turned into a source of near-constant urgent non-essential alerts, in other words, unnecessary stress.

Decades ago, I learned about the whole 4 quadrants thing in management: https://www.testprepchampions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/4quadrantstimemanagement-1024x768.jpg

You're supposed to work mostly in the "Important Non-Urgent" quadrant as much as possible and mobile phones if not properly managed constantly pull you to the "Not Important, Not Urgent" which is the worst quadrant to be working in.

In this perspective the problem with mobile phones (and e-mail also to a great extent have a similar problem) is that all notifications/calls look equally important from the outside, so you have to stop doing what you're doing to check them because they might actually be stuff from the "Important and Urgent" quadrant, but unless you tightly manage it, most of them are not, not least because, if you push back on it hard the people who constantly work in the "Non-Important, Non-Urgent" quadrant (i.e. those who are bad at managing their own time) will make that your problem too.

So what do I do to manage it so that my phone is not a source of stress:

• Calls to my phone for work subjects outside work always (this is important) get a "I'll talk to you when I'm back at work". You have to inflexibly refuse to handle work stuff outside work otherwise the number of work calls will just creep up. Also do it from the very start of a new job: your work colleagues need to be trained to expect that from you and you need to provide them with an actual positive out (i.e. "I'll talk to you when I'm back at work" and actually do it). If an employer needs you to provided out of hours support, that has to be in the contract and there has to be a work phone just for that which will be ON during the hours contracted for that and OFF otherwise.
• Call to my phone for work subjects during work time get triaged and non-urgent or non-important stuff get's back a "I'm busy now, I'll talk to you about this when I have the time" if I indeed have something more important or urgent on the plate. Again, train your colleagues to expect that if they call you with non-urgent or non-important stuff there you will not be giving them that sweet feeling of having dumped the problem on somebody else - the objective here is not to "deny service", it's to as much as possible have other people do the triaging for you so that you're only interrupted by things which are worth it.
• E-mail is for non-urgent stuff: when I have the time I'll look into it. On my phone E-mail arrival notifications will be turned off. Again, work colleagues need to be trained by you to expect exactly that from you. Be organised yourself and have regular "check e-mail" times - this is part of getting other people do the triaging for you.
• All application notifications default to OFF. Very few ever get turned ON and if they abuse it they get turned OFF on the settings. The sending of a notification by an application is a choice of whomever is the maker of the app, hence follows their choices and generally serves their purposes, which means that most application notifications are in some way or another a marketing choice, either directly some kind of sales pitch or indirectly to "remind you of that app", which means they're most definitelly neither urgent nor important. Only a handfull of applications deserve to have notification enabled IMHO, and sometimes even some of those abuse that and stop deservings it.

TL;DR - Triage things so that you're as much as possible spend your time doing Important Non-Urgent things (You go after the non-urgent to reduce the number of things that through doing nothing about it whilst they're not urgent, go from potential problem into "Oh, shit everything is burning!"). Activelly segregate contact channels based on the triaged level of subjects. Train your colleagues from the start to expect just that (i.e. that e-mails don't promptly get responded) and always push back from the start against misuse of contact channels (i.e. non-urgent non-important stuff coming via phone gets a response along the lines of "I'm busy with more important stuff, so send me an e-mail about that and I'll look into it when I have the time"), so that essentially other people will be triaging that stuff for you before they even contact you. As for smartphone Apps, by default assume that notification sending is driven by Marketing considerations of the maker of that app and hence are neither important nor urgent (personally I default to notifications OFF for most apps).

Own your notifications or they will surely own you.

Theres a "do not disturb at night" option on all modern phones nowadays for people who dont want to become unreachable

Seems a lot of comments are arguing about this as if it's an all-or-nothing. I use a dumbphone (for many reasons), but even it allows me to configure DND settings to allow certain phone numbers to audibly ring or vibrate. Surely smartphones can do the same? I find being with someone whose phone is constantly making noises to be very irritating--and more so if they interrupt our conversation to check it every time.

My not-so-dumb flip phone also has 3 indicator lights on the closed cover -- red if battery is low, a green envelope if I have a message or other notification, and a blue phone if I've had a call (even those can be disabled). So I don't have to touch it or do anything other than glance in its direction to know I have a message. "Smart" phones can do such simple things as this, can't they?

I've had mine on vibrate for years. Texting doesn't trigger it, only calls. It's been great. I look at my phone only when I'm ready to look at it.

Am I the only one that just ignores calls and texts that I don't want to respond to immediately or ever? I never have my ring volume up and I've muted almost all of my group chats, so only individual messages get through. My Pixel also does call screening which blocks a lot of trash from getting to me, and I keep space in my VM for when I have important calls get through that I either can't or don't want to answer.

Headlines like this are annoying AF. You wouldn't want your doctor keeping their phone on DND 24/7.

Edit: I didn't expect people to need examples, but here you go, something that happened to me few months ago:

23:21 - my IP phone rings, I'm literally about to go to sleep but I set this specific type of call to come through. I recognize the number and I know it's an emergency so I pick it up. A patient's family calling about them being in their local ER and the ER physician is about to pull the plug on my patient. I spend the next hour yelling at the ER physician to do his fucking job, frantically arranging a transfer. Next day afternoon, I'm having a full conversation with my patient in our hospital. If I didn't fight for this person, and let this go through the regular channels, they would have died.

My comment isn't primarily about work culture or work/life balance. There are some calls that you take because it's the right thing. Advice from people who claim they can turn off all notifications just tells me two things, 1) they don't know how notification scheduling works 2) they aren't the kind of people that others ever rely on in an emergencies.

I appreciate that Android changed from an opt-out to an opt-in model when it comes to notification permissions, but it's still not enough. I can't believe the mobile OS world became so much worse than actual computing. What a corporate hell scape.

I’m probably a nightmare to get hold of at a moment’s notice – and should never, ever be someone’s In Case of Emergency, much to my partner’s chagrin.

Any phone will allow you to still receive notifications for select contacts or numbers that call repeatedly in a given time frame with DND on so she's chosen to not be directly contactable by her partner or be his emergency contact. I would be offended by that if I was in his shoes, especially considering they have two young children.

I can't emphasize how important it is for you to control your phone, especially notifications. Every notification is literally a mind hijacking attempt. Regardless of the type of notification, it's something that disrupts our thinking and our flow.

Some of them are necessary—but most aren't.

All the native apps will of course try to get as much permission from you as possible, including notifications. Don't allow this permission freely.

Get really strict about which apps need to send you notifications, and when. Take it from a dude who used to give free reign to all apps for notifications.

Once I started thinking in a more digitally minimalistic way, it made a huge difference. Running GrapheneOS actually helped with this a lot. But you don't need GOS to do this and feel the difference.

I got some notifications turned on, but most of em are silent. So they still get delivered, but they're not time-sensitive. They'll be there when I check my phone next. I don't need em interrupting whatever I was doing or thinking.

TL;DR: Be strict about which notifications you allow, and when. It'll do wonders for your thinking, productivity, and mental health.

I love scheduled and automation based DND, except that about twice per year, SOMETHING SOMEWHERE updates and causes my alarm to be silenced by DND, despite having my clock app exempted from every possible silencing mechanism I can find.

For the life of me, I can't understand why that would ever be a useful behavior, let along default one.

Lucky for me, I have a pretty robust internal clock, but Holy Fuck is that annoying.

I just turned off notifications for everything, except Signal and banking apps. Most convenient solution IMO.

I have been using scheduled do not disturb for over a decade, it makes SUCH a difference. I always have it on 10 PM - 7 AM, and I have started enabling it for an hour if work picks up or if I’m at the gym so I can focus.

My work phone is on DND more than not, I’m available 7:30 AM - 5 PM on weekdays and it is in DND otherwise, super nice.

I do this to my mom as a way to be very low-contact with her. It's a huge relief.

I used to love texting when it was only a handful of friends but these days I hate the pressure of it being ever-present in my pocket and the social expectation to answer in a relatively timely manner. (This has led me to being a horrible texter, sorry everyone.)

I miss the old days of AOL instant messenger. Your online status did all the heavy lifting to communicate when you had some free time and felt like chatting.