17 Nov Turn Off Those Red Badges on Your iPhone and Take Control of Your Apps
A quick hack that will give you more mental space, decrease cognitive overhead, and possibly return actual minutes (hours?) to your day:
TURN OFF THE RED DOTS.
You know, those red dots in the corner of your iPhone apps? Those pesky notifications that remind you that you will never. get. caught. up?
As it turns out, you may not really need them. Or at least that is what I have found since I’ve implemented it myself.
You see, those ‘badge’ notifications are there as constant reminders that you have ‘something’ to do. They have the effect of hijacking your priorities for the app’s priorities. Each of these notifications wants to lay claim to your attention, and they prey on our hard-wired, natural desire to accomplish tasks. (Much of this is a matter of dopamine.)
For example, let’s say you’re working on a multi-page proposal for a client, something that might take you 30 minutes. You forget the client’s last name, so you quickly grab your phone to view their contact card. As you unlock the phone, you notice a red badge with a ‘2’ in the corner of your Instagram app. What do you do? Is it a comment? A “like”? A direct message? What if it’s something important?
Most likely, you’re going to take a quick excursion into Instagram ‘just to see what that notification is.’ Maybe it takes 5 seconds or maybe you get side-tracked and end up spending 5 or more minutes in the app. Either way, you’ve just yielded time out of your productive 30 minute block, and perhaps worse: you’ve just sent your brain into vacation mode. Your headspace is completely sidetracked and now you will have to transition back into ‘work mode’.
Even if you don’t click on the Instagram notification, your brain has been forced to make a priority judgement. Split-second though it may be, your subconscious has been undermined by an application that you did not in that moment choose to interact with. Instead of your brain dedicating its full capacity to the task at hand, it has unwittingly been hijacked, forced to re-reconcile your priorities with an ever-growing list of notifications. (Even as I write this, I have received three text messages. They are just on the screen next to me but I refuse to look at them. I can feel the pressure to acknowledge them building up inside me. My mind is looking for an excuse to ‘take a break’ from my writing and address them.)
By turning the red badge notifications off on your smartphone, you’re appointing yourself as the decision-maker. Now, when I open up Instagram it is because I have chosen to interact with Instagram. When I view my Outlook emails on my phone, it is because I have decided that now is a good time to review email. Not only do I feel more in control when opening my phone, my app experience is better, too. When I’m on Instagram, I’m there because I’ve chosen to enjoy the app, not because I’ve aimlessly stumbled upon it.
If you’d like to give it a try, I recommend reading John Fitch’s article here on Medium.com. It’s a quick step-by-step guide for turning off those red dots. (He is actually the one who turned me on to the idea.)
The Same Number of Hours
Last night while reading “The 48 Laws of Power” (a fantastic book by the great Robert Greene), I had a realization. All of the incredible, productive, innovative, noteworthy men and women of history whose stories he tells: they had the exact same 24-hour day as us. It really hit home as I read Chapter 40, where Greene tells the story of John Vanbrugh in 1702, “a kind of Renaissance man who wrote plays as well as designed buildings.”
Let me repeat that: this man wrote theatrical plays AND designed buildings. In 1702! Same 24 hour day as you and me. Same basic needs for sleep, food, and relationships. I can only assume that this John Vanbrugh maintained complete mastery over his time, leveraging every minute. In fact, I would suggest that Vanbrugh and all of the other ‘greats’ of the past were able to accomplish their work not despite their lack of modern technology but because of it.
I’m not suggesting we would be better off without technology, but we need to make sure to limit its control over our priorities and our time.
Footnotes:
Let me know if you end up giving this a try! Would love to hear if it works (or doesn’t) for you. Below are the three resources I linked to in the article:
National Institute of Health Article: “Dopamine does double duty in motivating cognitive effort”
John Fitch’s article: A quick method for ridding distractions on your smart phone
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene — This book is a game-changer for me and I plan on reviewing it every year or so. Greene uses narrative and anecdote as the backbone for each chapter, and he does it in a way that keeps even the most distracted reader engaged. Highly recommended.
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