It took me a while to realize just how disruptive notifications were to my day. I doubt I even got a large number compared to some of you, but I’m one of those people who’s obsessively tidy — digitally or otherwise. I make my bed when I get up, I don’t have 30 tabs open on my browser, and I feel triggered by an inbox with 999 unread emails. All this means that I have a compulsion to address a pinging phone, so I decided to cut my notifications.
I’ll go into some tips on the best ways to do it below, but the key was knowing what I really needed to be notified about. For example, if I have set times in the day when I check my email, read the news, or do my Duolingo lesson, I don’t need alerts from those apps during the day. I thought I did, but nothing is going to be so urgent that I need to know right at the moment it happens.