Ding… swossh… buzz.
How many items on the following list create a noticeable notification (sound/vibration) on your device?
Phone Call
Voicemail
Text Message
Email
Calendar Invite
Calendar Reminder
To Do Reminder
Instant Message
Instagram
Pinterest
Facebook
Twitter
Google+
Skype
Fitness Tracking App
Weather
etc, etc, etc
This list could go on and on. We are constantly being bombarded by the devices we surround ourselves with. There are ALOT of things happening on our device that could take us out of the moment we are in, cause us to not be present wherever we were before the “device distraction” occurred. If your anything like me, then the distraction is not momentary either, it triggers an action, “Oh what was I tagged in, let me see?” and then I launch the appropriate app, and review… and then post a comment… and then review my feed, see something that catches my eye and dive into that post, finish and think “I wonder if there’s anything interesting in my Twitter feed.” Go look at that, see a notification that an email arrived, look at that, reply… read other emails… On and on and on. Before I know it, I am very far away from the moment I was experiencing when the “device distraction” occurred.
This contributed (if not caused) my “micro-attention” and the need to always be doing something other than what I was doing. Wait… Whaaaaat? That makes no sense!
For me simply turing off all distractions and choosing to engage (act on) the source of these distractions at a time I decide to, instead of being prompted to by a notification (reacting), created more harmony and peace in my life; I can stay focused on what I am presently involved with, and not turned into a ping-pong ball of micro-attention. So my device only provides notifications for phone calls and text messages. You may choose some other threshold, but for me, all the rest is just distracting.
I noticed that this also applied to the email notifications on my work computer. I found myself constantly being interrupted and “squirreling* away” as an email came in with a small pop-up and and a sound that drew my attention. I would immediately be removed from the task I was currently engaged in, and more often than not go to my email and read/respond to the email, and possibly others as well. This had a detrimental impact as I was constantly disengaging and re-engaging in a task. By turning off the notifications, I am able to stay focused in a task, and CHOOSE when to view my email at a time that is not disruptive to my work. Sometimes this leads to great gaps in the day when I do not read email at all (gasp!), but that is wondrous in that I must be deeply engaged in something and not being distracted allows me to kick-ass in that moment.
* In the movie Up!, Doug the dog demonstrates a distraction that removes him from the moment. Luckily for Doug he can easily return to the moment before the distraction occurred, most of us are not so lucky. In our family, we now refer to the concept of being distracted from what we were doing as “squirreling”.