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Urgent versus Non-urgent apps
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One of the great disruptors in our life is the very phone we hold in our hand, bag or pocket. In a short period of time we have gone from a device that called for attention occasionally to a device that has a large amount of apps trying to get your attention every moment of the day. And if we let them, they will.
I have noticed that my productivity benefits enormously from making sure that the stuff that is capable of distracting me is treated differently than the stuff that I will check when I choose. A phone call, text message, plane departing late, etcetera will be on the first list (unless I do not want to be disturbed of course, then I turn it to silent, airplane mode or off). Yet another word posted on Wordfeud, an great new post by a friend on Facebook and in my case even the funny discussions on WhatsApp are definitely not that urgent. I put those on the second screen of my phone.
Killing the notifications of non-urgent apps has helped me focus and reduced the time lost by going through information I did't really need. Every day again!
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How?
On any iOS device, go to the iPhone's or iPad's Settings app. Then choose Notifications and then select the app that can be turned off. Simply turn Allow Notifications off and you will no longer receive pop-ups, badges and sounds.
On Android it is very similar, go to Settings, Notifications and find the app to turn them all off.
This includes the Mail app, because as we already discussed, urgent emails do not exist :)
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By turning off the notifications, I have noticed I check my social networking apps, email and other nice-to-haves less and less. At great benefit to my social environment, as I do more things that I promise and have more time left to really engage with my surroundings!
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