With ubiquitous connectivity we have constant access to everything we can imagine at a moment’s notice through apps and websites on our PCs, Macs, phones and tablets. At the same time, those exact apps and websites also have access to ping us when it suits them. Left unchecked, you will have a continuous stream of dings and notification bubbles popping from e-mails programs, collaboration tools, social media apps, games, and web sites. They are all fighting for your attention.
The problem is that the way notifications work are exactly wrong.
While most operating systems, browsers and apps give you some rudimentary tools to control these notifications, they are often buried in some dark corner of your settings menu, and many leave the defaults on – I mean, that is sort of the purpose of a default setting, isn’t it?
And even if you did turn off notifications, many people I know have some degree of the same habit – which is to check work emails too frequently. When you have an idle moment or you are bored, the habit automatically draws you to your notifications and messaging apps. In fact, even if you turn off the notifications, you know there is almost always something new waiting, so the tendency is to seek it out.
Don’t get me wrong – notifications are great most of the time – for example while you are at work. However, separating Work from Home was already a challenge prior to the Corona-virus pandemic, but the era of Working from Home has certainly brought this to a new level. There is no longer a long commute that helps you separate from work-mode to home-mode, and no business meetings and lunches to break things up.
You also find that for various reasons people work at very different times – some because they are night owls, others because they look after their kids.
What people rarely do, though, is to think about what the recipient is doing before sending emails or completing their actions that trigger notifications.
What´s missing is for the recipient to be able to control when things are delivered. This is not a new concept – in fact, its something paper-based newspaper have done for as long as I can remember. When I have a sufficient supply of “pee-pads” for my dog, with a few dozen clicks I can tell Wall Street Journal to not deliver the paper to my house for a period – so I am controlling the delivery of their news service/notifications.
So, if someone goes on vacation, and actually wants to have quality time off, there should be a mechanism for the person to tell e-mail programs or other apps, to delay delivery until a set time of my choosing, or simply hold until I choose to take delivery.
This would facilitate better focus – and that is something that is short supply these days.
Vik Bulletin 