Have you ever checked the settings on your phone to see how many of your apps have the standard notifications turned on? I did, and I was surprised by how many notifications I was actually getting every day. Notifications can easily rule our lives and distract us from becoming more efficient and organized people.
I have been trying to become a more organized person. It is true that a messy desk is a sign of a creative person, and that some of the most creative people in the world never developed basic organizational and time management skills, but I'm not them, and I would venture to say that you aren't either.
We have deadlines. We have to be on time to meetings. Being unorganized was less of a problem when we were kids and even young adults, but nobody wants to hire the absent minded professor, even if he did create Flubber that one time.
Our smartphones have become powerful tools to help us stay organized and keep us informed, but like other tools we have to know how to use them well, and keep them refined.
Recently, I added some daily goals using Google Calendar. Google Calendar is great for things like this, because the workflow is simple and intuitive. It also works with Force Touch on iPhones so that you can complete your goals right from the notification screen. I like that because it means that I don't have to go into an app to mark a goal as completed. In my opinion if I have to go into an app to complete a goal then that means that app isn't really doing its job to remind me of something.
Anyway, I set up four daily goals in Google Calendar. These are tasks that I want to accomplish every day, and I wanted Google Calendar to remind me to do it. After a few days I noticed that I didn't remember being reminded to accomplish every goal every day. I was getting some notifications, but not all of them.
I checked all of the settings on my phone and on Google that would affect how and when I was getting notifications from Google Calendar and I couldn't find anything that pointed to why I was only getting certain notifications, so I started to think about the whole process from the beginning.
I think most of us, as we download apps, are used to allowing notifications. It is an instinct at this point. Email, news, banking, even entertainment. We could make a case to be notified about the minutia of every app on our phones. For some of us, that is a lot of apps.
I counted, I have 118 apps installed on my phone, and 105 of them had the standard notification settings enabled. On the iPhone, that means it shows up on the lock screen and the notification center. There is also a red badge notification on the app itself as well as a banner notification that pops up no matter what app you have open on your phone at the time.
I was over notified.
I was getting too many notifications each day, and the extreme volume of notifications was degrading the overall value that each notification had. At some point our distracted brains revert to a boy-who-cried-wolf mentality, and devalues each attempt by our phones to garner our attention.
Thankfully, there were tools built into the notification system itself for me to begin to aggregate information as it was coming to me, but I had to start by categorizing the notifications themselves.
Tier 1: Most important notifications. Notifications requiring a timely response, or ease of access.
Tier 2: Important, but with fewer time constraints.
Tier 3: Not important. Just a nudge of a notification.
After that I looked at where I could put these notifications.
Lock screen:
The lock screen can be bypassed with touch ID on iOS, but is generally the first thing you see when you turn your phone on. I have put my most important notifications here. I use this in combination with the Notification Center. The lock screen is Tier 1 and the notification center is Tier 2. There are two ways to organize these screens. The lock screen could hold only Tier 1 notifications, and the Notification Center could hold only the Tier 2 notifications, or you could use the notification center as a collection of Tier 1 and Tier 2. It really depends on how many notifications you get, and if you use Touch ID. I use Touch ID, so sometimes I blow right past the lock screen. I use the notification center as a Tier 1 and Tier 2 combo location.
Home screen:
This is where all your apps live, and any badge notifications you have enabled will show up here. I reserve this category for Tier 3. I don’t want three notifications per day from an app that I use once a month or less, but I do want to know that I need to check an app, so that I don’t waste time logging into less important apps just to see if something has changed.
Notification Center:
This is another place for notifications to collect. Personally I use this for Tier 1 and Tier 2 notifications.
Banners:
I use banners and alerts in app specific situations. Meaning I don’t enable banners and alerts for every notification of a specific tier. I don’t want that type of notification every time I get an email, because I have all of my email addresses on my phone. I would be getting a notification 3 or 4 times every minute just for emails. These show up at the top of the screen regardless of what app they are in, and will go away automatically if ignored. Personally, I use these a lot specifically because they can be ignored.
Alerts:
These are like banners, only they require an action. I am very selective with how I use these. They are reserved for the most time sensitive Tier 1 notifications, which is exactly where I want things like Google Calendar goals to exist.
The biggest thing to think about is how to categorize your notifications for your life. I demonstrated the way that I organized my iPhone with the apps that I have in a way that benefitted me in my life and career. Your situation may dictate that you organize your phone in a completely different way. The point is that everyone needs to think about whether or not they are using their smartphone in a way that is helpful.