alt Hacker NewsI disable all notifications except for:
* SMS (and WhatsApp) for direct communications (disabled for an hour or two when seeking flow).
* Phone calls from family and close friends (filter disabled for a few hours when expecting an important call from elsewhere)
* Mentions and DMs on Slack (work hours only)
* Calendar
* Occasional temporary exceptions (Airbnb and airline apps during travel and a few days before/after; Taskrabbit the day before and day of a task; food delivery when expecting one, etc.)
Everything else I try to be notified of through email, which is easier to manage on a pull rather than push basis. I DO NOT allow email notifications. That’s begging for a deluge.
The default when an app or site asks to send me push notifications is a hard NO.
This volume of notifications is very manageable.
Agree. I'll catch up on group chats that do not require immediate attention when it suits me, not when the stream of messages happens to arrive.
As for OP: read up on alert fatigue; if a notification isn't directly actionable, you shouldn't even see it!
The pull model for information is more durable for humans than the push model. Try RSS for news/blogs, take some time (preferably offline) each week to prepare for the important events in the upcoming week(s), write them down on something you pass by every day (such as a whiteboard near your front door).