Why notifications teach us to ignore tasks

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

You create to-do lists in different applications, set a reminder for each, and then work under a symphony of notifications. Are you really comfortable?

10 apps for 10 problems

There are many handy apps that you can use to plan your tasks. And each of them has its drawbacks.

For example, Trello. Great service with boards and cards. You can create boards for different task statuses: "Delivered", "In Progress", "Done" - and move cards across these boards as you go.

But this method of planning has a significant drawback: you do not understand which task needs to be solved in the first place, and which can be postponed. As a result, you have a bunch of cards and you don't know what to do with them. You might as well just glue task stickers onto your office board, not knowing where to start, what to wait, and what needs to be done immediately.

There are other well-known apps to help you organize your life:

• Evernote can turn into a to-do list, or it can be just a quick note program, a writing tool, or a cookbook.
• Slack can be used as a bot that turns text into a reminder. Just add / remind to the text, and then specify what, to whom and when to remind.
• WorkFlowy is a scalable document that's great for taking notes and structuring projects. It is also a great system for keeping track of tasks.

Many people choose several tools for different tasks. For example, I use Evernote all the time for quick notes or important links, set tasks in Trello and Google Tasks, and add tasks to Google Keep. Moreover, I do not have any clear distribution, where are what tasks, important links and notes.

But even if you settled on one tool, you still use many applications: some send you push notifications, in others you view your incoming emails, some more are synchronized with your calendar, and so on.

And by wasting time organizing these systems, you are killing your productivity.

Many unimportant tasks make it a habit to ignore them

On the other end of the room a smartphone tinkles: a notification has arrived. Are you checking on your laptop to see if some long-awaited email has appeared? No. Then check out Twitter: did someone like it? Again, no.

Perhaps this is some kind of minor task like "Start the washing machine" or "Send resume to a new company" - in general, what you thought you needed yesterday. So you don’t even check what it is (you don’t feel like getting up and going to the phone), and again concentrate on what you were doing before the call.

We tend to only notice what we want to see. You don't want to know it's time to get up, take your mind off an important task, and start the washing machine. But here's the paradox: you'll be willing to interrupt if you receive a Twitter repost notification.

Psychology of notifications

In the article "" Ximena Vengochea and Nir Eyal call the notifications "Pavlov's call of the XXI century." On the one hand, notifications are great because they help you instantly know about something important. On the other hand, they are confusing.

Notifications kill our ability to focus on work.

A study from the University of Florida found that notifications (even if you don't respond to them) distract you just like phone calls.

During the experiment, one group of students played a simple game, and the second group - the same game, but occasionally distracted by sound notifications. Despite the fact that the students in the second group did not take smartphones in their hands, the test showed that the sound of notifications and vibration distracted them as much as phone calls.

It seems normal to ask not to call you during office hours. But with regard to notifications, everyone has a softer policy.

How to solve the problem

Why aren't you fixing your notifications problem by allowing yourself to be distracted? Because you are too lazy to somehow deal with this, and the problem itself does not seem so serious to waste energy on it.

It's like a pop-up window on a website. Instead of registering and forgetting about it, you train yourself to close it every time. And this becomes a normal action: go to the site, close the window, read on.

To solve the problem, you need to prioritize and leave only two tasks on your to-do list, and delete reminders for the rest. In an app that allows you to create and tier to-do lists, create Today and Later lists and set reminders only for the most urgent and important tasks.

Take a look at the list of your notifications. Do you really need to know what's new on AliExpress or who added photos to Instagram? You still do not rush to watch it all in the middle of the working day? So maybe turn off notifications and only devote time to your applications when you have it?

The most obvious solution is to exclude notifications from your life altogether. Owen Williams, after his relationship with apps, decided not to use Twitter's mobile client and only check the web version. This is a great option: you will only open the browser window when you have a free minute, and not in the middle of the workflow.

It seems to you that the next notification will bring something pleasant or interesting into your life. Whereas for the most part it is spam with rare interspersed with likes, retweets or messages that you have been waiting for. So is it worth sacrificing your productivity for this?