Turn Off Your Notifications
There's a lot of research showing most notifications have a negative effect on people
The Conversation has an article up from Sharon Harwood, a senior lecturer in Psychology at Deakin University called "Ping, your pizza is on its way. Ping, please rate the driver. Yes, constant notifications really do tax your brain." Harwood notes an article in PLOS One that found the average person checks their phone once every 15 minutes, or around 85 times a day. Findings vary, but they all agree it takes at least a couple minutes, if not more, to fully regain concentration after an interruption like the ping from a notification.
Even if your phone is on silent there's an effect. This is because we train ourselves to know there are unread notification on that phone and our attention may drift towards it, with the urge to check them. Especially if the notifications stimulate the reward center, like social media replies and such.
Multiple studies find that notifications can decrease productivity, degrade concentration and increase distraction. And a 2016 study published in Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience forum, found that self-described heavy phone users were more sensitive to the effects of notifications, taking longer to recover concentration after an interruption. Other studies have found that frequent notifications can increase stress, because of an urge to respond, and increased fear of missing out.
So what should you do, if anything. Harwood has some ideas.
- Turn off all non-essential notifications.
- Charge your phone in a different room than where you sleep.
- When you catch yourself reaching for your phone, stop and ask yourself why and determine if it's really important or just a distraction
- Break your work up into chunks and reward yourself with distraction, like phone use, at a time of your choosing, not the phone's.
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