My Master Tip for Avoiding Phone Distractions
Every morning you start your day with new determination. You setup the environment, turn on productive music, and start working but then suddenly —
Your phone rings and you see a notification from Facebook that someone liked your picture. And just like that your determination is gone. Curiosity takes over the steering wheel of your brain and focus takes a backseat. You are now wasting time on your phone again. And you’re definitely not alone in that.
It’s normal, much more common than you think. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to do — you need to get your time and productivity back from these “smart” devices.
Phones are deliberately designed this way to get you addicted to checking them constantly. It’s not the end of the world, however. And it’s certainly not something you can’t program yourself to overcome. Here’s my master tip for controlling your work environment and avoiding phone distractions — the Notification Settings. 📲
The simple algorithm to awe
No need to be confused. I won’t go through any tech jargon here. It’s just a simple set of steps that you can apply to decide which app notifications are important and which ones aren’t. Here’s a simple rule:
Most of the notifications won’t go anywhere if you disable them. They will be sitting in the app waiting for you, quietly, as they should. This small tweak will give you control on what can and what can not disturb you. Changing these settings is pretty simple and will only take you about 10 minutes, but for some of you, it might easily save you hours of wasted time. So let’s see how to tweak these in iOS as well as Android.
Handling notifications in iOS
In iOS it’s pretty straightforward. Toggle the “Allow notifications” button and you are done. But there are some other customizations also. Like the most distracting badge on app icons.
You can get rid of these also. Just toggle the Badge App Icon for specific apps you want. You can also disable only the notification sound and “show on lock screen” setting. When you open the notification history, all the notifications will be there without distracting you at all. Take your time to customize the best setting for each app to suit your productivity.
Handling notifications in Android
Go to app settings, click on the app you want to edit the notification settings for, and tweak them however you like. Let’s take WhatsApp as an example. If you don’t want any type of notifications from WhatsApp, just toggle the On button at the top as you can see in the image. You can also have different settings for different cases. For example, if you want to just block all the messages from groups on WhatsApp, you can do that by just toggling the group notification settings. Do keep in mind that different apps will have different case specific settings. Just play around for you ideal combination. 😊
App Specific Settings
After you have mastered this simple method, you can explore the notification settings inside the apps as well. For instance, in WhatsApp you can mute any group or person’s chat for a certain period of time.
Similarly, if you want to get rid of those distracting Amazon deals but still want to keep receiving notifications about the status of your order, that can be done too. Go to the notification settings of Amazon app and disable these two options (at the bottom) and boom 🎉! No more distractions from Amazon.
All the apps out there have these type of notification settings. You just need to take out some time editing them to suit your needs and take control of your life.
Conclusion
You can see how powerful this one algorithm can be in making you less distracted. I personally have saved many hours by following this, and if you apply the algorithm in the right manner, you will never miss any important notification either. Now go into your settings and start customizing this setting in your phone. Also make it a ritual when you download any new app. Check the notification settings first thing and edit them to your liking. It will make you much more productive with very little effort.
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows. Act today.”
Is there a particularly annoying app in your phone that just can’t stop getting in your face all the time? How do you deal with it? Do you have any special notification settings for it? Share it in the comments or tweet to me on Twitter!
If you enjoyed this story, you can check out more like this on our publication The Skynox Blog. We write about product development, lifestyle, health & fitness, and more interesting stuff. We also run a global initiative for open-source development, Team XenoX. If you’re a developer, you can check out and contribute to our open-source projects by starting here.
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