Productivity Tip: Use Notifications Sparingly - Check In

Phone with notification on the screen


First off, I’m not talking about random apps, news, and social media. Those notifications are obviously a distraction.

I’m talking about the reminders we set for ourselves. You can have Apple reminders, for example, remind you on a day, at a time, or even set up geofencing.

When you set a reminder to do something at a specific time, there is a very high probability that the notification will pop up on your device either a) when you are in the middle of something and can’t do anything about it or b) when you are away from your devices and don’t see it till later and have 27 new notifications. When you come back to that, stuff gets missed.

If you're actively working on getting things done, you should be checking your todo list each time you switch tasks. When you do that, the information in your todo list is in front of you only when you’re actually ready to do something with it.

There are exceptions of course. I sometimes set calendar reminders, particularly for really important or time-sensitive things (calls, flights). When they’re surrounded by otherwise unscheduled time, I often add multiple reminders starting an hour or two before so that I’m expecting the reminder that actually tells me to stop what I’m doing.

The same principle applies to calendars too, especially if your days involve lots of scheduled activities (e.g. meetings). Instead of relying on reminders/notifications, check your calendar regularly throughout the day.

Using reminders for recurring tasks (something you want to do weekly, for example) adds another problem: if you check it off a day late this week, you get the next reminder after six days. Now the notification pops up on the wrong day and you have to remember to do it tomorrow instead.

Planning your day with a tool like gantry, which allows you to decide whether a recurring task should have a rigid schedule or allow things to simply slide forward, lets you stay on top of one-off and recurring tasks in the same place, while minimizing distractions.