Drowning in a Sea of Alerts
By: Stef Hill
Tags: Procrastination, Productivity, Time Management, Work, Work Life Balance

That copy writing client has sent a message — ping!

That book editing client asked a question— ding!

You’ve made a sale — pop!

The washing machine finishes a cycle — bing bing!

Is that someone at the door? — ring ring!

Thankfully I don’t get new e-mail alerts because I shut that crap down years ago, see also my phone. Some things like the doorbell might be unavoidable…unless I rip the effing thing out of the wall, which is tempting sometimes.

Every appliance, app, website, and marketplace wants to alert you to something. Sure, it sounds useful. I can have soaring productivity by plugging myself into the mainframe and becoming super aware of every disparate event, question and occurrence across my working day. However, all these pings and dings have made me very aware that focus is finite. The human mind just doesn’t work like a computer does.

Apps and appliances present their alert functions as non intrusive. They claim not to commandeer your focus and attention, just a tiny bite of your limitless ability to be aware of many things at once. The theory is that all these numerous helpful assistants give you an ever so subtle and helpful poke now and again.

What these alerts actually do is completely derail your focus in exchange for letting you know what you should be doing an hour from now. I’m pretty sure you knew that anyway. I’m also pretty sure that a physical list which you can choose to look at when you need a prompt is more useful and less intrusive.

We all have a natural alert system. We have awareness of different things at different times. We tune in to what we want to concentrate on and prioritize. The idea that any of us can do that effectively when an external force is pinging away on our attention bongos is deeply flawed.

Certainly, there’s a time and place for helping our natural alert system out. A few weeks ago I was in a pub that had a fire in the kitchen. Off goes the fire alarm, out of the pub everyone traipses. That’s a useful alarm. Even in this example though you can see that an alarm is mean to distract you completely and get you to change track.

Even the words “alarm” and “alert” don’t have connotations of retaining your focus and cataloguing that you need to do something later.

Even just the availability of alerts and updates is a problem, the only difference is you do that damage to yourself. Whether it’s refreshing your stats on Medium or picking up your phone again, you aren’t actually alerting yourself to something that needs doing. All you’re doing is willingly bailing on whatever you’re meant to be doing.

Being busy makes people feel productive. Being productive fires up all the parts of your brain that reward you. The problem is this part of your primitive wiring is fairly blind. On a primitive level it makes sense for us to be alert to everything around us. On a professional level this is how you waste your time.

When you check multiple accounts, screens or messages you feel busy, because you made yourself busy. Busyness and productivity are not synonymous.

When you kid yourself that you achieved something (even when you didn’t) you get a kick of good feelings. That false sense of achievement triggers your reward responses, which is very dangerous when you haven’t actually done anything.

Phone, e-mail and other alert/message checking is addictive. You can see that in how other people use their phones and check e-mails even if you can’t see it in your own behaviour.

Check phone. Glance back at work. Twitch. Check phone again to see if an e-mail came in the last 2 seconds.

Even if you have a new message or email, is it productive to focus on it right now? If your whole life is about keeping abreast of new updates, when do you focus on your work? Probably after wasting most of the day and realizing you need to rush all of your actual work to get it done.

Alerts are the equivalent of someone physically tapping you on the shoulder and asking for your attention every few seconds.

This doesn’t just distract you; it constantly undermines your own decision making.

When you decide and plan when you’re going to do things you decide when you’re going to give your attention to them. You keep your focus and you stay in control of the direction of your day.

Trying to work on the basis that the flow of your actions is going to be determined by multiple external events (bar an actual fire in the building) is obviously going to make it very hard to concentrate.

Making a firm decision about when and how you check updates boosts both productivity and confidence. Take back control.