- I'm sure you've heard of them. The crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because their goddamn app notifications won't let you finish a 20-minute task without beeping or buzzing.
I put my phone on airplane mode as I left to go to the lab today; took it out of airplane mode three and a half hours later and my phone didn't stop buzzing for 30 seconds as the notifications came in.
I turned off all sound and buzzing on my phone before a date like five years ago. I only turn it back on when I'm waiting for a pizza to be delivered. I love how my phone doesn't not distract me unless I decide to look at it. In January I bought a fitness watch. It has some smart functions, including displaying phone notifications. I've decided it's the right level of distraction. I can glance briefly without digging around in my pocket and know it's something I want to look at or want to ignore. When I hike I'm sometimes out of cell phone range. It's great. It isn't like I'm staring at my phone in the woods, anyway, but it wipes out any temptation.
I do have a cell phone - it's just that it's what people came to call a "dumb" phone. No notifications barring an SMS or three a week from the bank. I turn off notifications by default unless it's something I'm waiting for (and that I know will come) while other stuff is under way. Sudden popups - especially those of miserable value - are annoying. I wonder how my experience is different from the mainstream - and what mainstream's is, for that matter.
The vast majority of those notifications are either neo-SMS (ie messages sent though Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger) or emails. I turned off all the rest. Oh, and calendar notifications, I guess, which I needed at first so I wouldn't miss class. Now that I've gotten used to my schedule I could probably turn those off too.