This post says, “22% dismiss notifications”. Why do people allow this? I see people with phones that have 3 new notifications per 5 minutes and none of them are human being messages or human being event reminders.
Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you. The news isn’t actionable. Stop letting the news task you. Your social feeds aren’t actionable. Stop letting your feeds task you.
(And, yes, I’ll concede that Duo push is valid, because either I initiated that, or I have a problem to solve. Being employed brings some of us joy, after all!)
Notifications are not meant to fill the silences in your life. Your thoughts are. Not all the random drivel that phones opportunistically shovel into our faces.
I don’t really like this post because it rabble-rouses rather than owning up to the major failure of the author up top. Maybe it’ll help someone regardless, but it could have been a lot more direct with no less effectiveness. Missed opportunity, I suppose.
> Turn off every notification that isn’t actionable or joyful to you.
I have notifications on for Uber Eats because I want updates when I order a food delivery. Of course, the app takes this opportunity to randomly (though infrequently) send me ad notifications during the other 98% of the time. Just this past week I've seen notifications for getting my Easter shopping done, and something for "National Burrito Day" which I'm sure is totally a real thing.
Unfortunately, lots of apps are like this. But are they annoying or frequent enough that I will turn off notifications? No, because I'd rather put up with it than have to remember to turn them back on the next time I order something.
I solve that in a hilarious way: by uninstalling the app when I’m not using it. Works perfectly, other than some slight sign-in friction, for e.g. airlines, Uber/Etsy, and so on. But I’d rather suffer through logging in with a saved password than receive notification spam — I can respect that others prefer the opposite way.
I want to. The apps want the opposite. Apple is unfortunately on the side of the apps.
By app store guidelines, it’s officially disallowed to use notifications for marketing. Of course the apps find their ways, at different levels of honesty. This has led to me turning off all notifications for some apps, but the problem is the mixing of channels. I don’t want my bank to send me ads, but I do want it to notify me about transactions.
Looks like you found the root of the problem already.
Managing these notifications (which are on by default most of the time) is a form of what I'm writing at here, isn't it?
Sure, notifications are inherently disruptive by nature and there’s an admin tax to turning them off. But unless you’re installing new apps every day, it’s a one-time fix and not an ongoing distraction.
That’s the realistic gray area in between the extremes of the argument. I enjoy the analog experience of my 20 year old Nikon the way you like your Casio, but they’re also both luxury items precisely because neither one is inherently important to daily life. They’re fun toys, not real tools.
Kinda but one-time disabling of notifications on a new app is setting the time on your Casio watch a couple of times a year. Do it once (or very infrequently) and you’re done.
Mine is a Timex Ironman :)
They’re only on if you clicked “Allow” on the permissions dialog for them, right? Or is this a thing where Android is forcing everyone to accept notifications by default? Or..?