I turned off (almost) all my notifications and never looked back
The first thing I thought when I saw the preview for “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix was, ‘I already know all of that’. While that was true, I agreed to watch it anyway because it was so popular and I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. Also, my husband really wanted us to watch it together and I didn’t feel strongly enough to object.
While watching I rolled my eyes. A lot. But two hours later, we both went over our phones and turned almost all notifications off. I felt so free! Everything went quiet!
For a while now I’ve been feeling a lot of negative emotions that I associated with social media. Every time I took a peek on my Facebook feed I got aggravated in a matter of minutes. Sometimes seconds. I deleted Twitter a long time ago for the same reasons (doesn’t it feel toxic to you?).
I knew all of these things for a long time: Facebook (and all social media) wants me to be engaged to the max, and controls my engagement with notifications, and preferring content that will strike the strongest emotions in me. Yet only after watching the Netflix feature did it occur to me that I might not want it to control me like that and that I can live without all the distractions.
All of my information and apps are still there, but only when *I* want them. Not when they want me, not anymore. And the fantastic thing is that my productivity is up, my screen time (as reported by my phone) went down 34% the first week, and another 25% the following week, and I don’t miss it at all.
Now I can concentrate better during the day because the few distractions that I receive are the really urgent ones (phone calls and Slack for work things, which is naturally very selective with notifications). I stopped getting angry every time I take a look at my phone. It feels so peaceful to chuck almost all notifications out the window, won’t you join me?
