Notification Burnouts? Do this now to give your mind a break
Emails…DING! Whatsapp…DING! Fashion Store Sale Promotion…DING! Calendar…DING! IG message… DING! Incoming call…RING RING RING!
Does this sound like your every day? If so, you need a break for your brain’s sake.
From the past few years of meeting a few hundred clients of various backgrounds, I have done some unofficial research, coming to a finding that the majority of people who don’t organize their device notifications are very brain-drained. When asked bigger questions like what their goals and dreams are, they almost don’t know how to react, and then come up with answers that are not truly theirs… mostly based on what they see on social media and news, which are very limiting, and not aligned with their hearts.
You may ask how I can tell. Because I ask “whys” a lot, especially when it comes to goals and dreams. This helps you gain clarity on what you REALLY WANT. It gives you a clear idea of what your life priorities are, and what matters most to you. These people, overwhelmed with irrelevant information every hour via their phones, laptops, emails, and TVs, are living another person’s life if they don’t set up a screening mechanism for this incoming info.
On the contrary, I have a friend who moved to a remote area in HK for a more laid-back lifestyle a few years ago. And another one who lives in the city but has always been very conscious of the information she signs up with. Both of them often remind themselves to take a step back to evaluate if any of this info aligns with their personal goals. They are the only few who can answer my big questions assertively, year after year.
Do these to screen out junk for your brain
Here are a few things that I do regularly that help me simplify things, save up money (from those useless subscriptions!), and gain clarity on what my heart wants. It gives me space to observe and fine-tune myself to come to my life purpose - putting my knowledge, experience and gifted sensitivity to help young professionals and families future-proof their heart-aligned lives. Try it out and your brain and heart will thank you, I promise!
Get rid of useless subscriptions and apps
Spare 30 minutes to review which apps on your smartphone that you haven’t used in the past 3 months. Delete them!
Review your email newsletter subscriptions and unsubscribe any that don’t resonate with your life goals. Especially those shopping ones!
Review your TV and entertainment subscriptions. We are living more after unsubscribing Netflix! We’d rather use the budget to subscribe to a YouTube paid account so that we can skip ads for my favourite daily yoga classes (in case you’re curious, it’s Yoga with Adriene).
Remove connections that drag your energy down
Remove social media connections if these “friends” give you a negative feeling. Be it jealousy, anger, or annoyance. What’s the point of following them anyway? If you want to stay as “friends” online, you have the option to mute them or hide their notifications when they post.
The same applies in real life. You don’t have to “give face” and show up at anyone’s birthday party if your heart hates it. We only live for 80 odd years, a mere 700K hours. Why waste 4hrs on something that’s not boosting the rest of the time?
Group your device notifications together
Now you only have the essential apps on your smartphone. Group the notifications of non-urgent ones to only alert you at a designated time, like after work at 6:30 pm so your brain doesn’t get bombarded with unimportant things when you’re working. Click here for the iPhone tutorial.
You can do the same for WhatsApp if that’s not important to you. An option is to tell your loved ones to call you directly if anything urgent. Alternatively, mute WhatsApp group chats.
Archive your WhatsApp chats
Archive WhatsApp chats after the conversation ends and there’s nothing to follow up with (you won’t delete the record if you archive them. You can dig them up with the search function). You will have a clean page and only show those that need follow-up. See how to do it here.
Limit your time on social media to 30mins a day
Set a limit on specific apps (include but not limited to social media, but this is where most people waste a few hours every day. Again, we only have 700K hours in our life. 4hrs/day x 365days x 40yrs = 5.8K hrs, 8.3%!!). If social media is not your full-time job, limit it to 30 minutes per day.
Time block for checking emails and clearing letters
Don’t do these things at random times. If people send you emails or letters in this day and age, that’s not life-or-death urgent. Manage your boss and clients’ expectations that you check your emails at 10 am-12 noon daily (or any other time you prefer) so that you can spare highly focused time on actually working on important projects. Ask them to call you if anything is urgent. This saves you lost energy in attention switching.
Prioritize your intentions and tasks every day
We talked about life and year goals in the previous post. Here, what I’m referring to is the broken-down daily tasks. I use this Productivity Worksheet by Intelligent Exchange which helped me in truly prioritizing my tasks - I will put my phones away when I focus on each, and won’t start the second task before the completion of the first one.
It’s time to take control
If we don’t set up systems to get our lives back, nobody will. I hope this helps detox your life, and eventually sweep out the clouds between you and your purposeful life goals. Leave a comment below on your journey, I’d be interested to know how it goes!
