Yay or Nay: Notifications on Your Phone

Do you have notifications turned on on your phone?

The other day, PJ asked to borrow my phone while he was setting up something for little sis in her room because he wanted to listen to Apple Music while he did it. It took about an hour and in the meantime, I was doing school with older brother. By the end of it, he quickly gave my phone back to me with a shrug. He was so over it.

“You have the most annoying phone in the entire world” he told me, only half kidding. What does that even mean?! I thought. He explained, "You have notifications going off every second. I don’t know how you get anything done during the day with everything going off all the time.” That made me stop and think for a second. I guess I had never really noticed how pestering my phone might really be. It’s just always been like that, so I’ve never known any different.

For an idea of what notifications I get, I have 4 alarms that go off at the same time every day to remind me to do various things (all having to do with the kids), our business email alerts me every time new mail comes in, text message alerts, Apple News notifications, and older brother’s school app that sends alerts when his teacher sends out updates about class/homework. That’s it! I am not one of those people that have social media notifications turned on (if I did, my phone would actually, quite literally, never stop beeping). I only have the essentials, or what I deem to be important, sent to my phone for me to check, at my leisure, of course.

Everyone’s comfort level regarding what they do or don’t get notified of is different, I suppose, and might reveal more about a person than we all realize. Writer Daniel Rose hilariously and smartly detailed his experience with turning all of his notifications on for an entire month to see what would happen. Unsurprisingly, it was madness. “Having all your notifications enabled can have a huge impact on your productivity, even after you disable them again,” he writes. “…it’s important to understand that even just a few [notifications] can impact both our work productivity and personal relationships.” You don’t say?

I don’t feel like it generally affects my productivity, especially when it comes to receiving email notifications for work (which I have to have on), but I could honestly probably cool it on the group chat text message notifications between our family and friends. PJ has most of his muted and it seems to really make a difference day to day. We both have pretty bad ADD, so it couldn’t hurt to try turning off at least a few of my notifications, could it?

What about you? How many (if any) notifications do you have turned on? Just the essentials or waaaaay too many?