The Problem with Notification Culture
My phone used to buzz constantly. Messages, emails, news alerts, app updates, social media. A near-continuous drip of interruptions throughout the day, each one demanding a slice of my attention.
I eventually turned most of them off and it was one of the better decisions I've made. But it made me realise how normalised this constant availability has become.
The Expectation Problem
At some point, "I didn't see your message" stopped being a reasonable explanation and became an excuse. The implicit assumption with modern messaging is that everyone is always available, always watching their phone, and any delay in responding is a choice rather than a circumstance.
This is exhausting, and I think it's making us worse at being present in our own lives. If you're at dinner with your family but mentally primed to respond to a ping at any second, you're not really at dinner.
The Office is Worse
Workplace communication tools like Slack have supercharged this. There's a culture in a lot of companies where responding to a message within minutes is expected, regardless of whether you're in the middle of something else. Deep work — the kind that actually requires sustained concentration — is being squeezed out by the pressure to be visibly responsive.
I've read that it takes an average of 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption. If you're getting interrupted every 10 minutes, you're basically never doing focused work.
What I Do
I check messages at set times. I have a short block in the morning, one around lunch, and one in the late afternoon. Outside of those, notifications are off. If something is genuinely urgent, people can call me.
Nobody has died. Most things that felt urgent weren't.
I'm not suggesting everyone does this — some jobs genuinely do require rapid responses. But for the rest of us, it's worth asking whether the cost of constant availability is worth it.
I don't think it is.