I freed myself from my Notification Slavery. You can too.
I’m addicted to my phone. I think I always have been.
My first phone is still crystal clear in my mind. I was just short of 13 years old. It wasn’t smart like todays models. I can still remember the creak of the plastic buttons as I sent text after text. They consisted of trivial messages that I painstakingly tried to fit within the confines of a single text message. (Sound familiar Twitter?) I sent all these messages to my best friend who lived about a 2 minute walk away. It offered us a freedom we’d never experience before, the freedom to talk after bedtime.
It seems like a million years ago now, but I loved that phone and every phone since. Hell, I’ve slept with a phone beside my pillow for a good 15+ years. Yet, I never felt like my phone was bossing me around until recently, when I kept having experiences like these.
I wake up.
My phone is blaring whichever alarm I’m using at the time. After tapping or swiping to snooze it I stretch out, not quite ready for another day yet. My brain isn’t awake enough to kick me out of bed so I lay around for a bit longer, lingering in the pleasant warmth. Instead of getting up I grab my phone and let it help me wake up. As my companion it knows what’s important to me.
Or it should.
Instead of helping me feel calm and ready for another day, it floods me with a barrage of notifications. Like many users, I’ve allowed any and every app to notify me of what they think is important. I want to have a good experience of the product so if they need to notify me they should be able to, right? I had always assumed that they’d treat my time and attention with respect and consideration, bothering me only when it’s relevant to me.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m notified of new posts being published on all kinds of social media. Posts from people I like hearing from, but also from people I hardly know or care about. I’m notified of actions I should be taking in app X or Y. “Don’t forget to practice! Don’t forget to log something! Don’t forget to!..”
In the midst of that vulnerable state of waking up, I’m bombarded with notifications. Reminding me there is so much to do and I’m already behind..! I feel exhausted before I even get out of bed.
The next morning will be the same.
I’m working, or spending time with a friend. The screen of my phone lights up and despite my wish not too, my attention is instantly divided. I don’t want to look. I want to continue in my flow, give my attention to my work or friends. But unless I check it, it feels like an itch I can’t scratch. It gets the better of me and I end up checking what was so important. It was a message in a group chat. It wasn’t important, but it was funny so I want to respond. Connect to those people too. But not right then and there, I was busy with something in the real world after all.
It takes me a few seconds to get back to the thing in front of me. My work or my friend. “Huh?.. Oh yeah, absolutely.” I answer half-heartedly, still half distracted, my mind on whatever I just read or saw.
I glanced at the screen for only a second, barely even touched it. Still, I feel ashamed. Why do I let a device tell me what to do and lure me away from what’s important to me?
And I never end up getting back to whatever it was that I checked either. Forgotten forever. Leaving both the real world- and digital interaction lacking.
I freed myself
As usual, I spent the majority of my summer holiday offline, allocating specific moments where I would check up on whatever I wanted. Friends, family, the news, cat pictures.. You know, the usual. Not only did this keep the roaming costs down (the joys of Europe), it also allowed me to spend more time in the moment, without distractions.
It felt freeing to be offline. To choose when I wanted to interact through my phone instead of it begging me for attention.
There were no more notifications nagging me for attention. Nobody was telling me I had to do ALL THE THINGS. I could choose what I wanted to check and when I wanted to check it. And when I did, I could actually give it my fullest attention. Interacting became a choice, rather than something pushed upon me.
When I got back home I turned off my notifications and I haven’t turned them back on.
Sound familiar?
It should. On average we check our phones between 45 and 150(!) times a day. Half of those times, we don’t even notice that we do so. We check the time, we check our messages, we check up on our notifications, the news, our apps. Sometimes out of habit, but often we are lured to do so.
This is hardly surprising.
Creators of phones and apps find new ways to get users to become more addicted to their phones every day. Not intentionally of course. There are no evil overlords sitting in their ivory towers rubbing their hands together after successfully hooking another poor soul.
As our time spent actively using an app has become the number 1 indicator of succes, our time has become the highest commodity in which we trade. It doesn’t matter if we are happy spending that time, so long as it is spent.
A battle is being waged for your time and you have to find ways defend yourself. Your time is what makes you valuable to companies, but time is a finite resource and we should all spend it how wé see fit.
Notifications are an incredibly powerful tool for engaging users and luring us back to our screens. Pulling us in instead of waiting for us to take charge. It’s not just a matter of ‘being stronger’ than the notifications. They are designed with such smart psychological tricks, we don’t even know how to defy them. So let’s take away their opportunity to lure us back in.
It’s been shown that juggling e-mail while working lowers your IQ by as much as 10 points. I wonder what damage notifications do?
Turn off your notifications : Take back your attention
“But how can I turn off notifications?? I have to be able to respond swiftly if XYZ happens!”
- Random stranger
Of course there are situations where being able to be notified is absolutely necessary. (Turning off your phone-call notifications can lead to very confusing situations where a phone is buzzing but you have no clue why it’s buzzing so you end up frantically checking every app you have until you finally end up at your phone-calls screen with that call you just missed judging you right at the top of the list. *awkward cough* )
Trust me though, very few apps require your absolute direct attention: Whatsapp, Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram.. The list goes on. You don’t need their notifications. You don’t need to know your friend just joined Instagram. Nobody needs to know that. You can still use all your apps just as you normally would. Since turning off notifications I’ve noticed that the time I spend in an app is spent better and with more attention than I would have before. Now it’s my choice to interact with it. Not theirs. Push rather than pull.
Let interacting be a choice, not of a chore. Free yourself from notification slavery.
1. Turn off your notifications.
On iPhone, go to your Settings, go to Notifications and just turn all of those app notifications off. Tap every single one of them and turn their notifications off. It won’t hurt them, I promise.
On Android the same applies. Go to Settings, Go to Apps, Select the app and uncheck the Show Notifications box.
2. Mute group conversations.
Want to be able to keep receiving notifications from a specific person? You can! My SO can always contact me, because that’s important to me. So I muted every other conversation in the app that we most communicate in. I still participate in the conversations, I just don’t get harassed when someone is talking.
Let’s End the Attention Economy
Start changing things from the inside out. Designers, Developers, other influencers in the industry, we can all contribute. Instead of focusing on Time Spent, start focusing on Time Well Spent.
Start making more conscious decisions about the time and attention you are asking from your users. Make products that are worthwhile to your users, so you won’t need to trick them into using them.
Thanks for reading!
I’d love to hear your opinions, leave a comment below if you want!
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Interested in this topic?
Try the following resources :
How technology hijacks peoples minds, from a magicians and google’s design ethicist : https://medium.com/swlh/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3#.tiay1m4ti
Empowering Design; (Ending the Attention Economy, Talk #1) : https://vimeo.com/123488311
Design for Time Well Spent : http://timewellspent.io/
