I have a plethora of chat apps, and they notify me incessantly. My in-laws are planning a get-together using Google Chat. I get a notification every time someone posts a message \u2014 a message that I don\u2019t need to see while I\u2019m working.
Same for marching band. There\u2019s a parent group, and from time to time, it sees a fair amount of discussion. Most of the time, I don\u2019t need to be notified of each and every message in the discussion.
I have a dozen GroupMe groups, iMessage conversations, Slack, Teams and a few others.
It\u2019s hard to stay focused on the conversation, the work, the task at hand when there\u2019s a deluge of distractions. It\u2019s notification hell.
On the other hand, iPhone and Android empower users with a great deal of notification options to try to help tame the hydra at the app level, but it requires time and effort to configure, and it doesn\u2019t really help when the thing I really need to configure is the notification settings for individual chat groups within an app.
Then there\u2019s my Garmin watch. It doesn\u2019t know anything about my iPhone notification customizations, so it shows everything, instantly. Every once in a while, it\u2019s a good thing, but most of the time, it\u2019s downright annoying, and I have to take off my watch, or turn off Bluetooth on my phone.
Why can\u2019t more of my apps be like Slack or GroupMe? Slack allows me to configure quiet hours, mute channels, and so much more. When my desktop is receiving notifications, it doesn\u2019t notify my phone \u2014 thank goodness.
GroupMe lets me mute individual groups and sub groups for 1 hour, 8 hours, 1 day, 5 days and always. This is a killer feature, one that Google needs to adopt in its chat app. Google chat lets me configure do-not-disturb for a duration, but it\u2019s app-wide, not group specific. Apple also needs to learn from GroupMe and improve the temporary mute settings for iMessage. (Update: iMessage gained the ability to mute conversations. Hooray!)
It\u2019s not just chat apps. It\u2019s Google Photos where an algorithm wants to interrupt my day to tell me that it has memories to share, or iPhone wants to tell me how much screen time I used in the past week. Years ago, I disabled notifications completely for email, Facebook, MarcoPolo, and others. Some apps have been programmed to tell me, when I launch them, that I\u2019ve disabled notifications, and that I should enable notifications. No thanks!
I use do-not-disturb on a frequent basis \u2014 when I\u2019m at church, when I\u2019m in a 1-on-1 meeting, and automatically when I\u2019m driving. Maybe it\u2019s anti-social, yet it gives me space to focus.
There are also times when I\u2019ve forgotten my smartphone and left it behind. They were peaceful times, times when I was able to focus on the human beings next to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe I need fewer apps, or I need to completely mute more apps. Maybe I need more tech-free zones (seems unlikely in today\u2019s world). Maybe I need to disable notifications on my Garmin watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is your solution?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a plethora of chat apps, and they notify me incessantly. My in-laws are planning a get-together using Google Chat. I get a notification every time someone posts a message \u2014 a message that I don\u2019t need to see while I\u2019m working. Same for marching band. There\u2019s a parent group, and from time to … <\/p>\n