Safetygoat

Turning off notifications

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

I’m one of those people that wants to know what’s going on.  ”Tell me what’s happening!” is a sort of secret mantra I’ve built up unknowingly in the past year (I secretly think I have ADD… or at least as much so as these kids we’re diagnosing it with these days).  When you work in web, there’s a certain amount of ‘the loop’ you want to be in, and it’s so easy to waste a whole day with it.   I recently installed Growl, which would let me know when someone changed a file in my dropbox, when people logged on to skype and more.

This was the final straw: I’ve got my mailbox, tweetie, google reader, adium, skype, dropbox, facebook, linkedin… well, since I have a few contacts, and I’m subscribed to lots of newsletters, I was chronically checking emails, twitter, facebook and more.  I can’t stop.

The problem was, although I was more connected:

1) I wasn’t getting anything done
2) I had nothing to talk about, as I wasn’t accomplishing anything

So, in embracing the Linchpin mentality, I’m focusing.  I need some peace.

Turning off the big interruptors

Step one:  Remove growl

Growl is a great way to be notified if something happens.  If you get a message from someone, it’s there in the top right.  It is great, but is also the biggest distraction I have.  There’s no need to be interrupted every two seconds when someone changes a file (in dropbox), or when someone’s internet kicks in and out and they are signed in and out of skype.  By just removing growl, my interruptions decreased by 50%.

How to remove Growl:

http://growl.info/documentation/growl-package-removal.php

Interruption level: 10 Highest
Estimated time saved: 50 minutes

Step 2: Unsubscribe to every newsletter you legitimately don’t read

I’m interested in a lot, but my time is precious. I’ll often try out a newsletter, but if they don’t offer me value every time their emailing me, they’re causing me to chronically check my emails as I see there’s something new. (If they don’t offer an automatic unsubscribe, shame on them. They also get marked as spam.)

Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 30 min per day

Step 3: Reduce your rss reader items to only the BEST items

I feel bad when I see my rss feeder unread number increasing and increasing. I want to make sure I read some things, but I do spend a good amount of time every day going through marking blog posts as read to get this number down. I’ve also unsubscribed to those places that I haven’t read recently, and especially to those places that post 20 times a day, no matter how useful some of their items are.

Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 20 min per day

Step 3: Turn off Mail notifications

I love getting new emails, and when I want to distract myself, it’s the first thing I check. I actually love that sound: DING! “Ooooh! Who’s written me?” I think! It’s not that I’m actually going to respond to the email right away or anything. So knowing that I have a new email is an absolute waste of time.

Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 40 min per day

Step 4: Quit Adium, googletalk, msn messenger, aim, etc

I turned these off a while ago. Not only was I chronically checking who was online, I was making it easy for others to distract me.

Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day

Step 4: Turn off most of your skype notifications

Skype makes loads of really fun noises… While it’s great to know exactly when you’re being contacted. But, hearing that someone new has come online, knowing when someone has sent me a message actually drives me to distraction. When I’m on a skype call, receiving loads of skype messages makes it difficult for me to concentrate on what I’m talking about. If you need to keep skype on, train your contacts to only contact you when it’s important, and to send you a text and receive confirmation before calling you. I personally only keep the call notifications on, and put it on ‘busy’ mode when I’m on a call.

Interruption level: 7 High
Estimated time saved: 30 min per day

Step 6: Close down skype, tweetie (twitter applications) and mail whenever you can

Set up specific times to check them and respond to people, as well as specific ‘wasting’ time. This is actually my biggest time waster, even though I’ve reduced my notifications. I find when these are off

Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day

Step 7: Close down any tabs that you might sit there hitting refresh to see miniscule changes.

This means ebay watching lists, facebook news stream, twitter home, anything analytics.  It also means obsessively browsing through Asos’s website for something I might like (but really don’t need anything),  frantically trying to get my google reader count down to zero unread, and anything else you can do for hours which accomplish NOTHING. These are time wasters, and can easily cause obsession!

Interruption level: 8 High
Estimated time saved: 50 min per day

Step 8: Turn off your internet completely

Nothing gets you in the zone better than turning everything off. I start to feel desperately alone, and often reference the web for development, so this is best when you’re designing. If you’re in the right mind frame, turning off the internet can help you do your best work.

Interruption level: 10 High
Estimated time saved: depends (probably a combination of previous entries)

How much time could I save?

On a really unproductive day, I could easily spend over 5 hours (my estimate, 320 minutes) doing absolutely nothing, designing nothing, and accomplishing nothing. It’s easy, but with a bit of diligence you can reduce the amount of unproductive hours.

p.s. These days, I’ve got still got tweetie and skype open, but with their notifications minified, I find I’m not chronically checking them. By the way, what are you doing wasting your time here?  Get back to work!!