Reduce notifications

Do yourself a favor and remove any notifications you do not care about from your phone. It will improve your peace of mind and your ability to concentrate throughout the day if you are not interrupted constantly.

I find myself to be the most productive when I start working before my colleagues have started, or if I work in a spot with poor internet. During the day there are often interruptions, such as Teams messages, meetings, e-mails and spontaneous calls. But during the quiet hours, that is when I can really enter a flow and get things done, I have experienced.

I think it is healthier to get less distracted by your phone, and instead let yourself be the one who decides when you want to open those apps. Instead of letting the LinkedIn app tell you 10 times during the day about everything that is happening in your network, let yourself decide when you want to open and discover if there is anything new to see. Let it be a conscious decision for you to decide when you want to interact with that app, instead of letting it interrupt you whenever it wants.

Since it is spring, it is a good time to analyze what notifications you receive and to do some spring cleaning. Whenever you receive a notification: pause and ask if it is truly worth your attention. If not, take the time necessary to go into the app’s settings and disable that particular notification.

Some apps are very spammy with their notifications, such as LinkedIn and Facebook. But I do not want to be interrupted by Facebook letting me know that there are event suggestions, or by LinkedIn letting me know that a colleague has commented on someone else’s post. I can open these times myself when I feel like I want to. I do not need the interruptions, especially since it is not anything of immediate importance.

I did this spring cleaning myself, and it brings me peace. I already did not care that much about notifications, barely looked at them and could let them stay on the phone for days until I interacted with them. But even if I did not pay much attention to them – it is still some degree of attention and some degree of disruption receiving them.