Do not disturb

I came across this article dumber phone and it expresses well about how I feel about my computing devices today.

Smartphones are useful, but they are also incredibly addictive, and that addiction is at the epicenter of Silicon Valley’s effort to grab an ever increasing percentage of our minds. In that a substance or behavior controls us, it becomes our master, and that just won’t do.

Amen. There’s a lot of good advise in this post.  I’ve been battling this very thing for a long time. Not only on my phone, but on all my devices. I carefully curate notifications. By default notification are not allowed and most applications do not get notification privileges. Notifications are off for all apps on my laptop and iPad. My laptop is for working and my iPad is a distraction-free consumption device. I only enabled calling, text and email notifications on my phone.  

Even websites want to send notifications nowadays. I can’t even phantom why you would want that.

Apparently Nir Eyal wrote a whole book about it and then some which is ironic since he’s well-known for his other book; Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Perhaps it takes one to know one.