Distractions disrupt a person’s ability to focus. The most famous study on this topic, conducted by the University of California, Irvine, places the average time to recover focus at 23 minutes! And the type of interruption doesn’t matter – it could be a chat with a colleague, a phone call, or even an email that catches your attention. It doesn't matter if the message is spam or from your boss; the effect is the same.

The price you pay for notifications

You might not notice the interruptions, at least not at first. If you’re still fresh and it’s early in your day, your willpower will help you smooth over the lost minutes. But this comes at a cost; willpower is a finite resource, and it won’t be long before you feel frazzled and tired. In contrast, you can work for long uninterrupted periods and feel pretty refreshed afterwards. The difference is in how often you were interrupted – fewer interruptions mean you use less willpower to get back on track.

Interruptions are a fact of life and you can’t avoid all of them. But some you can control –specifically, notifications on your phone. According to a 2020 study by Telefonica, the average smartphone user receives more than 60 notifications every day. These types of interruptions aren’t just bad for your focus; they also encourage dopamine releases in the brain that make you think more about receiving future messages than being present in your task.

Notifications on your phone interrupt your focus, wear away your willpower, and train you to be anxious about the future. Numerous studies prove these problems exist. But the good news is that you can control notifications.

 How to manage your notifications

These self-help techniques can reduce the impact of notifications on your life and mental health:

Look at your smartphone's notification controls

There was a time when smartphones didn't give us much control or nuance over notifications. But that has changed. If you go into your device’s Settings, you can see how often certain apps send notifications, and you can change different types of notifications. Some apps also let you set custom notifications. For example, in Whatsapp, you can enable or disable notifications from specific people or groups.

Set priorities

Not every notification is the same. Some are important, and you want to see them. But many aren’t important, and some exist purely to draw your attention away from what you’re doing. Controlling them means knowing what is important to you. Over a few days, pay close attention to what notifications you receive and turn off those you don't need. Within a short time, you'll curate a list of notifications that deserve your attention and eliminate the ones that waste your time.

Use 'Do Not Disturb'

Our smartphones and things like WhatsApp blue ticks make us believe we must always be available. But guess what: nobody made that rule. You are still an independent person, and your time belongs to you. You don’t owe it to anyone to always be available – and if they expect that, they’d better make it worth your while! Use Do Not Disturb (DND) controls to manage when people can reach you. Mute chat groups when you don't want to hear from them. Use your phone’s DND feature to stop calls from getting through. You can set priority for specific numbers so they can reach you in an emergency.

Disable lights, sounds and vibrations

In the late 19th century, scientist Ivan Pavlov famously showed he could condition dogs to respond to triggers, even causing them to try doing two contradictory things at once. Humans are smarter than dogs in many respects, but we fall for the same trick. We can be conditioned to a sound, vibration or flashing light and respond involuntarily –  some of us check our phones 150 times a day, even if we know there’s nothing new! The best example is how bedside alarms and ringing phones trigger cortisol (our stress hormone) to spike. Not every notification needs to vibrate, ding or flash for our attention. Even if you keep notifications on, try to avoid adding extra triggers. Use these wisely.

Notifications are useful. They alert us to something important, such as a critical email or instant message. But most emails and message notices are not so critical that they require your immediate attention. Every time you react to a notification, you reduce your focus and train your brain to react instinctively, just as a dog does when it hears the movement of a food bag.

It’s up to you to control notifications that have become out of hand. Turn them off, and then decide what works for you.

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 - Photo by Keira Burton