Did you know the average smartphone user receives over 63 notifications daily?

It's hard to imagine that even half of those notifications are useful; not to mention how much stress and distraction they could be causing.

That's why, for this quick win, we're going to reduce the number of notifications sent to your phone during the day.

In the last lesson, we set up a do-not-disturb schedule, which made your mornings and evenings notification-free. However, that doesn't solve the challenge of constant notifications coming in throughout the day, when your focus is most valuable.

Reducing the number of notifications sent to your phone stops you from being sucked away from your most important work for trivial distractions.

Go through your phone's settings and turn off all non-essential notifications. From now on, the only notifications on your phone will be the ones you decided to receive, rather than those your phone automatically decides.

Turn off all unnecessary notifications on your phone.

How should you define unnecessary? Unless there is a clear and critical consequence to turning it off, the notification is unnecessary.

Notifications to Turn Off

Types of apps you should certainly turn off include:

📵 Social Media Apps

• Examples: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok
• Why: Ideally you should check these apps on your own time instead of when they notify you. You don't need constant reminders to open them.

📵 News Apps

• Examples: CNN, NYT, Washington Post, Fox News
• Why: Breaking news updates throughout the day will only increase your stress and increase distractions.

📵 Email Apps

• Examples: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo
• Why: The vast majority of emails don't need an instant reply. You can instead periodically check email throughout the day at the times you decide.

📵 Games

• Examples: Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Pokemon Go
• Why: The goal of most mobile games is to get you to spend as much time and money on the game as possible. Turning off notification eliminates their primary tactic for sucking you in.

📵 Entertainment Apps

• Examples: YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBOMax, Spotify
• Why: These apps already do a great job of stealing our time and attention. No need to have them bombard us with notifications about the latest shows to make them even harder to resist.

📵 Miscellaneous

• Examples: Photos Apps, Shopping Apps,
• Why: If you can't imagine a reason why an app should be able to send you a notification, turn it off.

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Notifications to Leave On

Here's an example of the few apps you can consider leaving on:

• Messaging Apps (SMS, iMessage, etc.)
• Calendar App
• Ride-sharing Apps (Uber, Lyft)
• Meal Delivery Apps (Doordash, Uber Eats, etc.)
• Air Travel Apps (Delta, Southwest, etc.)
• To-Do Apps (Reminders, Todoist, etc.)

The thing in common with these apps is that they only notify you when something important is actually happening. They won't try and draw you in just for the purpose of taking your time and attention.

If all these changes make you a little nervous, that's OK. You can always turn individual apps back on later. The important thing is to experience life without your phone constantly stealing your attention.

Tip: To prevent "notification creep" (the gradual process of notifications retaking your attention) going forward, when an app asks for permission to send you notifications, start by declining it. This will stop "notification creep" from happening and will ensure you don't undo all the great work you've done in this lesson.

Previous Lessons

1. ‍Do Not Disturb‍