In October, I made the somewhat conscious (as much as anything was conscious then) decision to change my notifications settings on my cell phone. I turned off my notifications for Facebook and for text messages. I already have my phone set to vibrate, so essentially I took away the three most common "alerts" I would get on my phone. The decision has had mixed implications, but I prefer it overall. I have many more notifications when I go into the Facebook app (the norm now is 12-15), and the same is true for text messages (I had 107 texts in my phone tonight when I looked), both of which suck. Here's the other side of that coin though- That's about 200 times a day my phone would buzz, or i'd have to go through and pick which messages I wanted notifications for, which is a pain. Now? I get none of them. It's still there when I want to read them, but that's it.
The main reason I did this was productivity. I wanted to spend less time flipping my phone around, trying to read the latest notification, and more time working. That may seem like a novel concept, but things were out of hand. Group texts with 64 messages, Facebook threads with 10 replies, and really none of this was pertaining to my day-to-day needs. It was a lot of discussion about things that weren't integral to doing work. It was stuff I need to be saving for when I have down time, not occupying my most important times in the day.
There is a down side- i'm responding to people much slower, and with much less frequency. I'm forgetting things that don't pertain to work or potential work, and sometimes neglecting people who I usually haven't neglected in the past. I've had a few complaints, some on the absurd side, and some not. I had one person go crazy last night that I hadn't responded to her about hanging out this week- oops. I realize that other people don't like this at all, and why should they? I'm less responsive than I was.
I guess the only response I have is this- too bad. I need to get my face out of my cell phone, and stop worrying about every buzz I get. Some need to be responded to, and I'll get better at that. I'm not living for my phone though, even if that causes me some temporary pains. It sucks, but the only other option is eventually needing to turn it off for a week or something so I can unplug, and I have no interest in doing that right now. So, this will have to do.
So, no, I didn't read that text. I'll get back to you sometime soon though.
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