Turn off the notification bell
These days are a constant overwhelming of information coming from anywhere. If you want to keep time for you to achieve things you like and you want to do with highest priority, you must keep your life as much distraction free as possible. Whatever effort you do to quit a social media platform, you might be tempted to test this new one (hello Nostr) or find a great forum about a niche topic you like. Maybe you decide to stick to a limited source of information and follow them by RSS, which is great, or just subscribe to this newsletter for an important project you follow. But then it’s just one more RSS feed, one more newsletter, one more person to follow on YouTube or what ever. In the end you get several notifications per days on your phone and computer for a new article, a new video or a new email. The result is just a constant interruption of what you are doing, when you have no time to consume this new information because you were doing something else.
Now it’s time to review your setup and think what is really important. Which notification I really need to receive right now? This instant message? That new email? This chat group discussion ongoing? The latest rss article? This new cool video? This social media like notification? Everyone is free to draw the line where he wants. For me after some experiences, I figure out I have already barely the time to check my instant messages right when they come. As I could get relatively important message on my instant messaging app, I kept these on, possibly disabling notification for some groups that might be too frequent and never urgent. The rest? I disable everything. No more notification or popup for a new email. No more social media like/follow/reply interruption. When I have time to spend browsing my email, I open and check what’s new. When I’m in the mood for some reading, I open my RSS reader. When I want to loose half an hour on social media, I check if anything is interesting. I need up to one hour distraction, I check my video subscriptions and pick the most interesting one first until I have spend the time I allocate to it.
The point is that you decide when and for how long you consume your flow of information and entertainment. And if one of your app or service is overwhelming you to the point you feel you spend more time finding good content that consuming it, just unsubscribe to the source you don’t want to see anymore. It feels stupid to say it but I always wait way too long to do it and I’m sure it’s the same for more people, at least the ones I talk about it.
Now, take a few minutes of your time before jumping to the next article, post or video and unsubscribe these useless newsletter, remove this rss feed that you never have time to read and this YouTube channel that make one video per day or more which bring you close to nothing in the end.
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