413 push notifications a day! Increasing productivity by reducing distractions.
A push notification is a distraction from productivity. Every time I get one, it pulls my attention away from a task.
With an escalating workload these days, I’m looking for any additional productivity I can muster. So, I did a 5 day audit of my push notification distractions. It was an exhaustive exercise, but I like data. The numbers were way higher than expected and I quickly realized I could make my days more efficient. Here’s how it broke down.
Over 5 days, I received the following average daily volume of push notifications to my phone (per day):
94 Work Emails
11 Personal Email
39 Junk Emails
56 Slack Messages
57 Twitter Notifications
42 Texts
10 Calendar Notifications (Meetings)
47 Facebook Messenger Mssgs
19 Google Push Notifications
9 RobinHood App Notifications
9 LinkedIn Messages
11 SnapChat Messages
2 Instagram Messages
3 Voxer Messages
2 Soundcloud Notifications
1 JetBlue App Notification
1 Gym App Notification
My work email notifications and Slack are my most important ones that I can’t eliminate. So, to optimize productivity, I had to reduce notifications from other channels. Unsubscribing from email newsletters I don’t read, eliminating twitter notifications, reducing FB Messaging, reducing apps from my phone I don’t use, and changing some setting on Google notifications. By doing all this, I was able to reduce push notification from 413 to ~260/day by the following week. I had nearly a 1/3 reduction in distracting push notifications, and there was a noticeable difference in the amount of time that my phone distracted me during the day.
The point is, do an audit of what takes time away from what you’re focused on, and make reductions. Push notifications are designed to suck you back into an application, so reducing the volume of notifications you receive could save you an hour or more in your work day.
