It's 11:00pm on Sunday and I'm in bed drifting off into dreamworld when Ding! The sound of my phone receiving an instant message. Ugh! I forgot to turn the sound off.
The preview window on my phone's homepage shows me the first few words: Hey, I just sent you an email...
Dude! really?
You IM'ed me to tell me you sent me an email about work? which I'm not doing right now because it's 11pm on a Sunday?
The next day, 9:00am... Ding! client #2 Hey man, Just wanted to remind you about my appointment on Wednesday.
Yes. You'r appointment was confirmed in writing by the person in charge of confirming appointments in writing. It's not something I do.
A few minutes later... Ding!
client #3 Hey man, U busy rn? Was wondering if I could get an update on that song you guys are editing.
Oh come on! the person who is working on that is not me and has given you a delivery date which is next week. Why are you IM'ing me about it at 9:00am??
FTS!
enough is enough!
Notifications OFF motherlovers! how do you like me now??
BEST
DECISION
EVER!
At first I thought my friends would get angry at me; maybe loose some clients too. But as days went by, and I only check my WhatsApp messages in free spaces in my schedule, I realized This thing has been such a distraction all along.
While I'm at it, let me archive all these useless group chats too.
Then I came to yet another realization! WhatsApp is DESIGNED to distract you!
- There's no way to separate the important messages from the trivial
- You can't shut off broadcast messages
- You can't put contacts into categories
and I'm tired of it.
I'm the captain of my communication now
I'm amazed at how this little modification to my behavior has had such an impact in my productivity.
I have longer periods of deep work, I feel more present at dinner parties with my friends, clients are using asynchronous communication more, I'm spending way less time in meme-ridden group chats.
I love it and couldn't recommend it more.
There are a bunch of privacy reasons why you may want to consider quitting this app too, and if you'd like to read up on that, here's a link to an article about it:
But from a productivity and focus standpoint I think it's a huge win.
What do I do about instant messaging with my work team? well, I'm glad you asked. There are a bunch of tools out there that are way better for instant communication. We decided to go with Slack.
It integrates with Google Calendar, Monday.com, Asana, and even our note-taking app, Notion. You can open different topic channels, set reminders for specific conversations, nested threads, run polls, send cloud-based video with screen-sharing. This thing is super powerful and would highly recommend you check it out.
What's next?
Well, after I saw the disproportionate positive effect this little tweak had on my productivity, I started exploring all kinds of time-management, scheduling, note-taking tools out there. I'm even picking up exercise, improving my diet and working on my financial goals too :)
And it all got started with turning those pesky notifications off.
If you're like me and want to take control of your life, or improve your productivity a bit, give this little hack a try. Who knows, you might find out it works for you too.
Image sources:
https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/wires/business/one-ring-phone-scam-comes-in-middle-of-night-luring-you-into-costly-callback/
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/16329676/reasons-quit-whatsapp-facebook-outage-app-offline/
https://slack.com/intl/es-gt/scale
Uninstall that bullshit Spyware, never look back.
Wire is the only messenger I will use.
I would LOVE to!
I keep it around because some people use it exclusively for communication. I'm even part of a business networking group that uses it a lot. Bizarre, right?
You should hire a pentester to hack the business owner and say you will settle for 5% of this year's GDP, and never using whatsapp again lol
My phone is on airplane mode every single night. I hsve done that for a while now, its amazing ^^
Do you have a strategy for not letting your phone interrupt your flow during the day?
Well.. None of my apps are allowed to send me notifications.
Otherwise I just leave it in another room if I need to focus on something else :D
No way would I be happy being contacted by work via text app of any kind. Email or face to face is fine. I only have one or two people that contact me on what's app and I have DO NOT DISTURB on my phone at all times so I never am disturbed by beeps!
Yes! Well done! Having your phone on DO NOT DISTURB permanetly is a huge win!
I'm a bit more customer-facing when it comes to work, so I do have to educate clients and vendors about what communication method is best and who to direct communication to. It's a constant battle haha.
Sounds like a great decision there and that's one pesky client you have! I'm a little uneasy about WhatsApp being used for work purposes, I always keep things away from my personal phone and have a separate work number that goes off after 5pm so I don't have to think about it lol
BEST DECISION EVER!
oh I've tons of pesky clients lol. We have a code word for them: happy customers. Heads up goes something like "Hey, a happy customer called in asking for an update on XYZ" 😄 Anybody listening in won't have a clue.
Hahaha! I like the code word! Very nicely done, we had something similar in service but the code wasn't so much of a code, more of a grim reality - "dickhead inbound" lol
DING!!! 😂
Lol 😄 Discord notifications from homies are different.
Woop Woop!
Oh man, I can relate to this! My phone is on silent all night, and I have an alarm clock now haha
I hate that that’s the worse 😂
😎😎😎
💪