Taking Back Our Focus
Most humans on the planet are living in the era of digital communication; computers, smartphones, smartwatches, smart-internet-connected-thingerbobbers. These connected devices enable unforeseen and wonderful ways of communication and collaboration, but our respect and understanding of the benefits and drawbacks is still in its infancy. There is a cliche saying that most successful applications become a communication platform, meaning that at the core, they enable the communication of information between people and machines, and enable actions to be taken based on the messages. Whether it be a business system or the latest ephemeral semi-sentient chat app, all of these entities are competing for our attention and focus.
Every day we wake up with a limited amount of choices, and each decision is still driven by the ancestral programming of survival. We’re meant to be deciding whether this berry or nut will nourish or kill us, whether the land and animals are telling us to stay or move. However, we’re employing this powerful decision engine on whether to double-tap a picture to like it, give something a thumbs-up-or-down, share something with our audience to maintain the curated digital version of our self, and a myriad of other small acts which amount to many brain cycles of our waking life. (Not to mention what it’s doing to our non-waking life? I won’t digress…). And with each application come notifications and alerts hungry for our attention, forcing us to make micro choices throughout the day, further diminishing our decision power and ability to focus on what’s important.
I see it in the Bay Area and remote parts of Latin America, old and young, across the educational, cultural, and socio-economic spectrum — people are losing their ability to focus. Instead, their little vibrating and noise emitting devices are ever-ready to call attention to the latest reward-mechanism-driven alert or notification, regardless of the context we find ourselves in (at work, in a business meeting, with family). We’re forced to perform a costly context-switch, to make yet another decision, to get yet another interaction reward, in exchange for losing our focus toward the task at hand. In exchange for our ability to be present in our choices. In exchange for being able to employ our abilities and focus to their fullest.
It’s time to take back our focus.
Wrangle Alerts and Notifications
The first step in taking back our focus is to wrangle all the alerts and notifications across all our devices, and to take a stance on how we’re willing to have our attention pulled away from the task at hand. We have to build a practice of conscious interactions with our technology, a strategy to manage them, and have a priority stack of what’s allowed to break through to our present mind.
I propose we start with a white-list approach for everything — only the most important notifications are allowed to call on our attention and distract our focus. These should be apps that are time-sensitive, to which not paying attention would have a detrimental impact on our lives. Some examples of real-time-sensitive notifications include driving directions, arrival of a car service (Uber, Lyft, etc.), and for many people, phone calls and text messages. The following is the list of apps on my iPhone which are allowed to fire alerts and drop off information to the Notification Center. Also, only a few of them are allowed to break through the locked phone or “Show on Lock Screen.”
- FaceTime, Calendar, GetAround, Google Maps, Hangouts, Lyft, Phone, Signal, Tappsi, Uber, WhatsApp
Note how not even my text messages or chats are allowed to call on my attention. By definition those are asynchronous and can be dealt with when I’m ready for them.
Next, let’s take control of the notification screen. Remove the temptation to power-on your screen to check on the state of things. Only time sensitive and critical information should be displayed on the lock screen. i.e. My meter is expired, missed a call from mom, or my Uber is here!
A quick note on handling calls and direct messages from other people (text, WhatsApp, Slack, Hangouts, etc). Currently on my phone, the only functionality/application that’s allowed to wake up the screen is an incoming phone call (via native app, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts/Voice, etc) , be that through the cell phone, or via WhatsApp/Google Voice/Hangouts, etc. Applications through which I communicate with other people are one of the only things allowed to vibrate, make a noise (in the off-case the phone is not in silent mode), and show pending/unread messages through badges. Taking this a step further, my text messages have a custom vibration (“. . .”) vs. other chat apps which have a single vibration notification (can’t configure them on iOS 9 as of this writing). This makes it easy to identify that I’ve received a text message when the phone is in my pocket or on a hard surface. This gives me further insight as to whether or not I should even care to take a look at the phone, and knowing that I’ll have to unlock the phone to get to the badge (more on badges below) makes me double think to engage.
Badges to the rescue!
Next, embrace badges. These little guys are the little circles and numbers that appear within an application or their badge/icon. They let you know that there’s a notification waiting for you, and the little number lets you know the number of new notifications. Most modern and well built apps will persist (techie word for: will be available) these across devices, and will let you get back to them if you miss something — think of Facebook, Twitter, Trello, or Slack.
However, badges can be a double edged sword — they still display every time your screen is visible, calling for your attention. If you’re borderline-OCD like me, you won’t like having non-important notification badges (to me, it means that there’s still things to take care of). Similar to alerts, only certain apps are allowed to have notification badges on them. In my case only a handful of apps have badge-privilege, and again they’re mostly communication and collaboration apps (Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, Trello, etc), where my interaction with them has some kind of time-sensitivity.
Notification and Alert Priority Stack
Think about notifications and alerts in terms of a priority stack — making noises and vibrations, waking the screen, showing notifications on a locked screen, displaying alerts when using the device (i.e. banners and prompts), having a badge on the app icon, no alerts or notifications. Only the most time sensitive and critical ones should be allowed to interrupt you in any way, including noises, vibrations, and badges. The more important something is, the more privileges it should have. Also, most devices have a wonderful little switch to put it on silent mode, yet vibrations will still come through. Use it strategically to control when the device is allowed to make noises. For example, in my life, the only time my phone is not in silent-mode is when I’m expecting a call/text while I’m doing something active with my body where my phone is not in my pocket or I’m likely to miss the vibration — i.e. arranging the garage or cooking.
Airplane Mode — On the Ground
You’re trying to accomplish something, but you’re still getting bombarded by beeps and buzzes, even though you’ve already cleaned up your notifications and alerts? Put it on airplane mode. End of story.
Embrace asynchronicity, batch activities, and fight FOMO
You’ll function and work best when you can devote your full attention to the task at hand, whether it be catching up with your partner or friends, coding, studying, relaxing. Most interactions in our modern lives do not need to be fulfilled in real-time, or synchronously. We must therefore take advantage of this, and engage with tasks and notifications in an asychronous manner when we’re willing and ready to do so. Don’t fear missing out on something! If it’s important enough people will get a hold of you somehow, and if not, chances are there was little to be done anyway. Crank through all your Twitter/Instagram/Trello/Jira/Slack/LinkedIn/<insert app> notifications when you’re ready to do them all in batch-style, meaning spending a single session interacting with the app, vs. many small and more expensive mini-interactions. Again, notification badges are your friends! As extra credit, time-box these interactions so you only spend a limited amount of time and do not go down a deep rabbit-(or kitten/puppy)-holes.
Remember that, like respect, asynchronicity is a two-way street. If you’re working on a task, and need someone’s input to move it forward, think twice about engaging them real-time because they’re likely focusing on something else. If what you’re working on is not critical, put it on their queue in an asynchronous manner for them to get back to you, and then work on the next thing on your plate. Get back to the original task when you have everything you need.
Reset Expectations — You Won’t be Available All the Time
Build a culture and self-brand that people should not expect immediate responses to their interactions; you’ll get to them when you’re ready for them, otherwise they should escalate to a more pressing communication channel. Educate people on the best way of communicating with you given the need. However, be sure to be mindful of other’s abilities and needs. I don’t expect all friends and family, old and young, and others in my life, to understand my ways. There’s exceptions to the rules :) — i.e. grandma or my partner’s father.
Random thoughts and ideas:
- Have sensible default notifications/alerts on new devices — not everything needs to click/chime/beep/boop
- Have a better way to view which notification are on/off, grouped by type (looking at you, Apple!)
I’m guilty of this. I still fight with the cocaine-like-fueled need to press the lever and get to sweet presents of interactions waiting to happen. But I have to manage these, condition and remind myself that they’re not going anywhere, that they’ll be there when I chose to interact with them on my own terms.
Take Back Your Focus
The above is a work in progress, and applicable to my experience as a human embracing the technology and communications age. I believe that technology has the potential to positively impact our life, but we’re still figuring out how to allow that to happen. I’ll keep iterating on the approaches based on new technology as we go along, and it’s important to note that some of these ideas may or may not be applicable to your life. I challenge you to figure out how to take back your focus in order to live a more present, productive, and enjoyable life co-existing with devices and digital communications.
