Over the last few years, there's been an increasingly loud call for a re-evaluation of the relationship between humans and smartphones. For all the good that phones do, their grip on our eyes, ears, and thoughts creates real and serious problems. "I know when I take [technology] away from my kids what happens,” Tony Fadell said in a recent interview. “They literally feel like you’re tearing a piece of their person away from them. They get emotional about it, very emotional. They go through withdrawal for two to three days.”Turn off your push notifications. All of them.
The single decision that has improved my life quality the most during the past year was to turn off almost all notifications (radical transparency; it was my wife who made me do it). I only get notifications from phone calls (but I always keep my phone on silent), messages, the SAS app (for flight changes and boarding passes) and a private Slack group with two of my closest friends. I have badges for Twitter, Linkedin and the App Store.