How many times have you been in a conversation, or in the middle of some work, and you receive a notification through your phone or computer? Perhaps you hear a ding, or feel your phone vibrate, or catch sight of a message that flashes across your screen.
And in those moments, what’s your immediate reaction?
For me, I immediately want to know what just came in. Or if I see the notification icon indicating unread messages or updates, I immediately want to see what’s there.
And even if I resist the urge, it still usually occupies my thoughts for a while. What could it be? I wonder if it’s from so and so? I wonder what they said? I hope they’re not asking about that? Or maybe it’s about this? And on and on it goes. And sometimes, just to resolve the internal dialogue, I stop whatever I’m doing and check…you know, just in case.
The problem is that this constant shifting from what I’m doing to something else zaps my actual productivity. Sure, I may be staying ‘up-to-date’, but in doing so I may be sacrificing my most important resource in both my work and relationships: my focused attention. Because even if these notifications don’t turn into a rabbit trail — which sometimes they do — they still create a constant state of context-switching. Which in turn prevents me from giving my undivided attention to the work, or the person, in front of me.
Why all the notifications?
Sometimes the reason we’re bombarded with notifications is simply due to inertia. The app or the program notifies us by default, and we just don’t take the time to make sure that the settings match what we actually need or want in our situation.
Other times it’s because we’re afraid that we might miss something important. Which, in some cases, is a valid concern. But the question to ask ourselves is, how many of these notifications actually require our immediate attention — something time-sensitive or mission critical. If you’re anything like me, very, very few — if any at all — actually need immediate action.
Now, sometimes a job may require being notified about certain things on an ongoing basis — think customer support — and it’s a critical part of the job to respond in a timely manner. But even if this is the case for one type of notification, there’s usually plenty of other potential notifications that are not critical, and only serve to distract us from the work at hand.
Do I really need to have my email open at all times? Do I really need to know about every update on social media. Is it really helping me get better work done? Or would it be better to process these things in batches, as opposed to being “always on,” and allowing whatever comes in to divert my attention.
The challenge is that the constant influx of alerts and notifications can keep us ‘busy’, but whether it’s helping us give our focused attention to the task at hand is another question.
Switching off
Now, you may consider yourself really disciplined, and able to not let these kinds of distractions divert your attention — and perhaps you are. But I know I am not, and my guess is, many of us are not.
So instead of putting myself into a position where I have to choose whether I will give in to the temptation to check the notification, I’ve found it’s often easier to simply turn them off — especially when I’m in the middle of something and don’t want the possibility of being distracted.
Now I’m not calling for the elimination of all notifications, regardless of the situation, but rather the thoughtful and judicious use of them.
Because unless we’re intentional about what we give our attention to, we could end up giving it to whatever happens to ask for it the loudest, even if that means taking our focus off the work and relationships that are even more important.