At the time, and even to this day, my friends still think I’m weird for turning off all the notifications on my phone. I’m not even going to try and disagree with them either, as what I’m doing is probably on the extreme side of the spectrum? I’m not sure, but let me give you some context.
Back in 2016, I became self employed for the very first time and leading up to leaving my 9–5, I was incredibly worried about being my own boss and managing my time properly. I asked friends and acquaintances for any tips and or advice they could share, and I became a complete sponge, ready to make this work!
During my search for enlightenment (ha!), I came across Cal Newport’s Blog, he’s an Associate Professor for the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University and the author of six self-improvement books, one of them being Deep Work, which gave me a new perspective on the distractions in our lives and how it relates to focused work. Here’s a question presented to Cal about attention residue in a New York Times interview:
“TH: You use a term in your book to describe that feeling: attention residue. What exactly do you mean by that, and what’s the reason for it? Is there a way to actually avoid it?”
“Cal Newport: Every time you switch your attention from one target to another and then back again, there’s a cost. This switching creates an effect that psychologists call attention residue, which can reduce your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time before it clears. If you constantly make “quick checks” of various devices and inboxes, you essentially keep yourself in a state of persistent attention residue, which is a terrible idea if you’re someone who uses your brain to make a living.”
He embellishes more on attention residue in Deep Work but suffice to say, his book made me ask myself the question, What if I turned off all my phones notifications, what would happen? I realized that every time I worked on a script, read a book, or basically did anything that involved intense focus, when a notification alert popped up on my phone, it would immediately pull me out of it. Even if the distraction threw me off for a second or two, it would take me at least 15 to 20 minutes to really get back into a focused mindset and get the work done.
So when I finally turned off all my notifications, I was amazing by how much I was able to focus for long periods of time. I’m talking 3–4 hours straight. My days were completely silent and I found a new focus that has really helped me take things to the next level. Now when I check my phone, I check it because I WANT to respond to any potential notifications that came in, and have carved out that time, now that the work has been completed. I want our newfound technology to help us get things done, not distract us from it.