Task Notifications, Or Make Good Habits?
In this way, there are at least two important considerations when starting a journey of productivity.
Consider minimizing your reminders to the bare minimum.
Realize that the smoothest path into work is a deliberately chosen one.
In terms of the first point, consider going through your phone’s system preferences, and one by one turning off reminders, then turning them back on as desired or needed.
In terms of the second, to make a chosen path, the work must be approached by way of habit. The habit to start though is not to “just do everything”. It is instead to create a single list to which you can turn daily: a today list. A well-honed list creates a simple silo of play and work, a collapsed and streamlined set of ideas from the entirety of our environments.
If you have a list that stores your work and other desired habits of the day, then your single habit of “look at daily list” covers you.
Kourosh has great insight here. I liken this to a common life scenario: chores.
Imagine you’re a teenager. Your mom gives you a list of chores to do around the house. The dishes need washed, laundry folded, and dinner needs to be on the stove by 4pm so it is finished when your dad gets home.
Are you going to:
- Make your mom nag you until each of these tasks gets done, or
- Just get the work done?
While it may be easier to just let mom tell you what to do, of course she’ll be happiest if you just get the work done.
Looking to your task manager, do you need your task manager to be your mom nagging at you to get work done?
Probably not.
There are definite benefits to having due dates and alarms set on your tasks especially if a task must be done by a certain time (i.e. take the trash out on Thursday nights). However, over-dependence on them may signify a larger issue.
I’d contend if you have a bunch of alerts set up to remind you of all the work to get done throughout the day, you may expect too much out of yourself in a given day or you might not have taken responsibility for those tasks yourself.
It is much better to build a habit of trying to realistically assess what you can accomplish in a given day, week, or even month, make those tasks into a list, and then work off it. This is why people love paper for writing down their daily tasks, and why picking the three most important tasks for the day is so effective.
If you relate to the feeling of being alerted and dinged to death, I highly encourage you to take some time, evaluate what you can realistically do, and start smaller without all the bells and whistles.