The Great Notification Purge

Do you ever wake up in the morning and find yourself drowning in a sea of notifications from countless apps? It's like having a hundred people asking you a thousand questions, all asking for your attention. But let's be real, you can't answer them all, and most of them aren't even valuable to your life.

I used to be in the same boat. Every morning, I'd wake up to an overwhelming number of notifications that drained my energy and distracted me from the things that truly mattered. I knew I had to take control of the situation.

So, I decided to declutter my phone notifications and only give energy to the ones that really mattered in my life. Here's how I did it:

I made a mental map of all my notifications, app by app.

Then, I went through each app and decided which notifications were highly critical to my life and which were just noise.

All the ones that I saw that were just Noise, I turned off their notifications right then and there.

Here are some examples-

Notification from the McDonalds App about the new Cardi B meal. Not critical to my life. When I go to McDonalds next I will open the app and then decide what I want.

Notification from Nike telling me they have a 60% discount going on. I don't care. When I want to buy something I will open the app. Just because there is a discount I am not going to spend money.

Playstation app messages between my friends when they are playing. I love gaming but not something I want notifications for to tempt me to play. "No buenoz"

Here are some that I really want to see-

Slack app notifications especially from work because I like what I do and want to be on top of stuff especially high important messages

Notification from my apple watch telling me that I am not hitting my sleep goal.

American Express notifications because I want to know every detail of any transaction that happens.

It isn't an overnight process, but over the course of a week, I went through every notification I received and decided if it added value to my life or was just feeding into my bad habits.

Trust me, your brain will thank you for saving its energy and using it for things that matter in your life to achieve your goals. So, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

(P.S. I still love McDonald's, but I don't need their notifications while I'm trying to work. It's distracting, and I get hungry.)