You will cut notifications on your devices down to the ones that earn the interruption.
In lesson 5.1, you listed the apps that interrupted you and sorted them into keep, batch or off. This exercise turns that list into settings on your phone and laptop. It takes about 25 minutes, and the change lasts until you decide otherwise. Afterwards, a week of before and after numbers will show you whether it made a difference.
Have your phone, your laptop and your keep, batch or off list from lesson 5.1 in front of you.
Before you change anything, write down your current numbers so you have something to compare with. On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Screen Time, and note your daily average screen time and the number of pickups and notifications per day. On Android, look for Digital Wellbeing or a similar section in Settings, which shows screen time and how many times you opened the phone. Menu names vary by phone and software version, so search the settings app if you can't find it.
Write down three numbers as your before figures: average daily screen time, average daily pickups, and, if your phone shows it, the average number of notifications a day.
Open notification settings on your phone and work through the list of apps, top to bottom. For each one, apply your decision from lesson 5.1.
For apps you keep, leave notifications on, with sound if you need it.
For apps you batch, such as work email, Teams and busy groups, turn off sounds and banners but leave them on the lock screen or in the notification centre if you like. You will see them when you choose to look.
For apps you turn off, switch off notifications entirely, along with badges, the red numbers on app icons. Social media, shopping, food delivery, games and most news apps belong here. A badge is a small, constant reminder that something is waiting, and it tempts you to open the app even when nothing important is there.
Then do the same on your laptop. On Windows, notification settings are under System. On a Mac, they are under Notifications in System Settings. Turn off banners for email and chat apps you have chosen to batch, and turn off notifications from your browser for websites that asked for permission once and have been sending alerts ever since.
Now create two modes, one for work blocks and one for evenings.
The work mode is for your deep work and Pomodoro sessions. Allow calls from a short list of people, such as your manager, a close colleague and family, and silence everything else. If your phone lets you, schedule it to turn on during your daily focus block from lesson 4.4, or link it to calendar events labelled focus.
The evening mode is for after your working day ends. Silence work email and work chat. Allow calls and messages from family and close friends. If you set an evening cut-off for work messages, as lesson 7.1 will suggest, this is the mode that enforces it. Schedule it to start at the same time every evening.
On a laptop, turn on do not disturb or focus mode during work blocks. Some calendar and chat apps can do this automatically when a focus event starts.
Here is how Priya's audit went, as an example. Her before figures were about 5 hours 40 minutes of daily screen time, about 90 pickups a day and around 210 notifications a day.
She went through 47 apps on her phone. She kept 6, batched 9 and turned off 32. On her laptop, she turned off banners for Outlook and Teams and blocked notifications from four websites in her browser. Her work mode let through calls from her manager and her mother. Her evening mode, from 9pm, silenced Outlook, Teams and her two work WhatsApp groups.
A week later her figures were about 4 hours 50 minutes of screen time, about 60 pickups and around 70 notifications a day. That is a drop of 50 minutes of screen time, 30 pickups and about 140 notifications a day. Your own change will depend on your job and your habits, and a smaller drop than hers still gives you back time you can see.
Set a reminder for seven days from now. When it goes off, open the same screen time report and write down the same three numbers. Compare them with your before figures.
Also note anything that went wrong. Did you miss a message that mattered? If so, move that app or that person into your keep list. Did an app you turned off creep back with a new permission request? Turn it off again. Settings drift over time, and new apps arrive with notifications switched on by default, so it's worth repeating a quick audit every few months.
You've finished when every app on your phone and laptop has been set to keep, batch or off, you have a work mode and an evening mode set up and scheduled, and you have before and after numbers for screen time, pickups and notifications, one week apart. Start with the before numbers, right now, before you touch any setting.
Complete the notification audit, set up two focus modes, and record your daily pickups or screen time before and one week after.
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