Why turning off your notifications is better for you then you think.
Sep 16As I stack away the last empty suitcase its official : Our annual summer holiday is officially over. A two week road trip through the south of France with just me and my family has left me relaxed and revitalised for the coming months amidst the busy mayhem of my modern day over connected life. The great thing about going abroad are the insane roaming charges for data communications. at 1.5 euro for every 10 measly megabytes you do the right thing and turn the data reception on your smartphone OFF. The result ? A notification free zen zone that lets you rediscover what it’s like NOT to be bossed around by technology.
“Notifications, alerts, pop ups, dings and dooh-dah’s : The over connected mother-in-law that will never leave you in peace”.
There used to be a time when people were “unreachable” They would be away from their home phone and nowhere near a pay phone. There was just no way in hell you could get in touch with them, even if it was urgent. All you could do is wait. Back then we did not wonder if said person might have been abducted by aliens or stepped into a transdimensional rift, there was no cause for alarm or general panic .. they were just “unreachable”
The very notion of this “unreachable” concept is of course absurd today. Now we do not only have to be “available and connected” every second of the day, we also need those connections to be so instantaneously, so direct, that the notifications of their arrival have become a priority to whatever activity our human lives behold at that very moment. Vibrations, pop-ups, Notification balloons, unread counters, flashing LED’s … Short of setting our pants on fire whenever a new email arrives, our computers and smartphones seem to think that the digital flow of communications should take precedence on whatever activity we are performing at that specific time.
Now .. if we go back to the days of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in “You’ve got mail” and you only GET an email once or twice a day .. its quite nice to have your computer blab out that AOL jingle whenever a new piece of electronic correspondence arrives in your mailbox… but these days that’s just not the case anymore. We get boatloads of emails, notifications, instant messages, tweets, tags and more .. but it seems like every single event still gets the same popup or sound that sent Meg Ryan on her way to a fake orgasm in an overcrowded diner (Sorry , wrong movie).
The paradox lies in the fact that as the quantity of these “informational events” rises, their quality diminishes. The messages are higher in frequency but shorter in content. What used to be a 150 line email (with one “You’ve got mail” jingle) now consists of 150 instant messages (each with their own separate ding). And if we draw that analogy up a level : Imagine your mailman ringing your doorbell EVERY SINGLE TIME he drops a flyer or a piece of spam into your mailbox. I think by day three you would be ready to shoot the poor man … and yet we “accept” this level of interruptions from our technological devices every single day.
The result : ‘Fragmented reality’.
With your ‘Virtual world” constantly interrupting your “Realspace” your attention span gets shattered and you experience the world around you in a distracted and shallow way. I’ve called this symptom “diminished presence” because even when you are in a “real” conversation with somebody you are not really “There”… The actual moment (and connection) you have with this other person gets interrupted by dozens of other fragmented interactions from cyberspace who in turn fragment your interaction (and attention span) in real space .. The result : Reality confetti : The way you experience your day / your life .. cut up in small incoherent pieces leaving you with a feeling of confusion : What did I actually talk about over dinner last night.
Retake your life, Remaster your tech.
So what to do ? Throw away your digital devices, Buy a Chuck Wagon and hide up somewhere in the mountains ? .. No, don’t worry I’m not going to go that far .. You can still be the hyperconnected supernerd who is the closest thing to Tony Stark your friends will ever know .. but your interactions with technology need to be on YOUR terms. How ? Here are some pointers.
This is a notification to turn of your notifications.
The first thing you need to start doing is turning off your notifications. Whether those are email, facebook, tweets, rss feeds, Voxer messages, dirty pics via Snapchat or what have you : Make sure they no longer have any AUDIO or HAPTIC (vibrational) notifications on your mobile device. In other words : If you are not actually LOOKING at the device you won’t know they are there. Yeah .. it will be hard at first .. you will suffer from withdrawal and constantly check your phone to see if there is something there .. but that will pass … At least this way you won’t be interrupted by a random spam mail from Runkeeper at the very second you want to kiss the girl/boy/anime-drawing of your dreams. The point is that the interactions with your information streams are going to be ON YOUR TERMS. Just turning of the sounds/vibrations on my phone have given me more focus on my moments in reality when I need/want them. I still check my phone when I’m bored .. but I’m not Pavlovs dog that starts to slobber for new info whenever the bell rings.
Disengage the creational from the communicational.
For you creative types out there. Try writing/composing/drawing/singing/creating something while you need to keep track of 5 Facebook chats. The chance is the end product of this labour of constant interruption and attention diversification will look like some piece of homework your dog ate, pooped out, ate again and then threw up. And still you THOUGHT it was going to look great but the constant interruptions completely fragged (and fracked) it up for you. The answer here is to split the devices you use for CREATING (and consuming) content and those that you use to “communicate”. I read and watch movies on my iPad .. Facebook, Email, Twitter and all ther rest of my social media tools are on my “Communicator” (an iPod touch thats lying around the house) There is no shame in having multiple devices if they each serve a specific purpose.
Let technology work for you.
So try to be your own little Sarah Connor and pick up the “Fight against the machine” Imagine your Cellphone is that evil Terminator that wants to hunt down any coherent perception of reality and blow your attention span to smithereens with its arsenal of pushy notifications. Take back what’s yours : Mastery of technology. The fact that YOU operate your devices. YOU drive your car when and where YOU want to . You do not eat when the microwave tells you to (if your microwave tells you things you should clean it more often) and YOU use your phone to communicate when YOU want to. Forget the modern urge to “constantly” be on top of things. If you were a 90’s stockbroker who managed to make the deal of a lifetime because he INSTANTLY got info on his blackberry .. thats just awesome .. But if you read that DM on twitter 20 minutes later than intended … i’m sure the world is not gonna grind to a halt.
So step back from the churning river of push notifications and retake your position as master of your own technology .. This is your final notification to turn off your notifications .. Because its good for you.
Related Posts
You know what to do ! Gtasks for Android.
Nov 15Getting things done can be a full time job. And I’m not talking about getting any work done. No ! I’m talking about the art of getting things done. Of constantly reorganising and optimising ones work flow, tools and strategies to achieve maximum efficiency in a minimal time span. Nothing better then being able to get a days work done in 4 hours .. so you can idly surf Reddit for the rest of the day. However , sometimes the quest in finding the right tools, takes up more time then the actual work you wish to get done. We have talked about some great apps in this field like Wunderlist, Evernote and Mindmeister, but when you are a real “I do everything in Gmail” kinda guy .. Wunderlist might not cut it for you. Enter Gtasks (for Android). One of the lesser know functionalities of Gmail (and Google Calendar) is the option to organise your tasks. But its all in the web interface. What if you want to go all Freddy Mercury and .. “break free” of your browser ? “GTasks is a simple and efficient android to do list app. It help you to organize your life in a simple and elegant way. It has both local mode and google account mode.” or so the website claims and .. it is correct. Simple in use, modest in functionality, brilliant in simplicity. It helps you to get things done on your droid-friendly device.
Gtasks is available from the Play Store.
Related Posts
Getting things done with Wunderlist.
Sep 24
If procrastination was considered an artform, I think us ADD geeks would be considered the very masters. Only we would not have started our artform yett, we would do so tomorrow. First we need to see this video abou this cat on Youtube.
As a remedy to this “affliction” we are blessed with, information overloaded techno-philes with the attention span of a butterfly tend to lean towards guru’s like David Allen and his famous ‘Getting things done’ techniques , or, if we could spare the time, listen to Merlin Man rave about his “42 folders”. Having been at both points I can only conclude that the rantings of these “superheroes of productivity” depress me to no end. I feel like i’m NOT getting things done and for the life of me can’t come up with 42 folders to put those things in.
And yet, during many times my mind is overloaded with tasks, idea’s, things I should not forget, Issues that have been sitting on the back burner for so many months. So “getting those things done” would be nice. If only to organize the myriad of NEW tasks and idea’s, random thoughts and more that I come up with to “drown out” the nagging backlog of what I still need to do.
So here comes rat-hole number 2 : Looking for a “system”. I have seen geeks depart in the valley of the “GTD’s” (*getting things done) in the quest for a perfect ‘organisational system” . I have yet to see one of them return. Looking for a GTD system and tweaking it can be some time consuming it becomes an activity, i dare say and “obsession” all on its own. Defeating the purpose of the system. You get nothing done because you are still tweaking your GTD system.
I’ll spare you that one way trip into that black hole by sharing what I found this week. The need I have is as follows. I need to keep track of several (many) issues for work, some of them done by others, some of them need to be done by me. I need to keep track of those issues, make notes, follow them up etc. Untill now I had just used Outlook (of all things) and some pathetic attempt at folders to do so. I must say .. it was not a success. Why ? Because Outlook (and the folders) are in my office and I am on the road. Item number 2 brought me closer to my goal : 2do is an App for the iPad that consists of a fairly well featured todo list that let me follow up on all of those things. Allthough there was no link between “2do” and my Outlook, I played “biorobot” and typed over all the things I needed to remember. But 2do was flawed in several ways. Only available on the Ipad and with no “cloud functions”, 2do is an insult to a cross platform slider.
Enter my Solution : Wunderlist : A very well built 2do application that lets you add, categorizdddddde organise and liquidise ( lets mix up the usual adjectives here) your tasks. It looks pretty good , is fairly stable but there IS one thing that lets it rise to the very top of the list : Its cross platform and “cloud bounces” your data up and down to the several devices you have. Did I say several ? That is because I meant it. Available for the Ipad, Iphone/ipod and the Android it helps me “get things done'” in ways David Allen could never do. I love the layout, the reminders, and the sheer fact that I can punch up a Todo list on my phone and have it available everywhere. With desktop versions for Windows, OSX, Linux (only 32 bits) , and the entire range of mobile devices, I cannot hide behind the excuse that my current device has no access to the interface of my 2do list. (When everything fails and i’m stuck in a Cave with a Thin client, I can still use the web)
So give it a spin and … Get things done : http://www.6wunderkinder.com/wunderlist/ Oh btw : It IS of course … Free.
