A Quiet Phone

Happy Friday. As you can see, I’m sending this at a decidedly un-happy hour… hour (though I suppose it’s getting close for this end of the week 🍻). But I both wanted to clear out some links I have piled up to share before some new weekend reading, and I was also feeling inspired to send something after reading Fast Company’s profile of Revue (and the curious resurgence of email newsletters in general), which graciously quotes yours truly (more below). 

Speaking of email, I know I already spent my yearly allocation of email complaining last month, but I’ve been thinking about something tangentially related recently: notifications.

That is, I think I’m going to try doing something I thought I would never do: turn off the majority of push notifications. 

While it may sound insane given how many apps I have on my phone (241, currently), I’ve never said “no” to the request of an app to turn on notifications. Obviously, that has led to an untenable situation with said notifications, but I have viewed them largely as I view Twitter: I’m fine if I check them out when I have time and generally ignore most of them. 

But. The sheer number of them has grown overwhelming to me recently in the amount of time my phone buzzes, my Apple Watch buzzes, and/or I have to swipe them away as I’m actually using my phone. It’s just too much. So I’m going to try the other way – extreme curation of which apps can buzz me and bug me. 

To that end, and to tie off the bow from above, I’m going to try turning off email notifications. Again, some of you will undoubtedly think it’s insane that I have them on at all. While others will think it’s crazy to turn them off. But basically I want to experiment with actually adhering to something I’ve long aspired to do: check email only twice a day – once in the morning, and once in the evening. I’ve generally tried to do this for years, but due to notifications, I end up playing Whack-a-Mole at least a dozen times a day, if not more. 

In general, the iOS push notification settings suck in that they lack all but the most basic granularity (time settings, etc). I really, really, really hope they change this soon. Certainly, the pressure should be on given what Android is doing not only with notifications, but being mindful about time spent on the phone in general. We’ll see what iOS 12 brings soon enough…