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Comment by leonidasv | Hacker News Reader

I get so many unimportant notifications from my phone nowadays that my brain just learned to ignore the vibration. The only notifications I unconsciously listen for are the ones from my computer (when I'm using it) that are, guess what, Calendar, Slack, WhatsApp. E-mail notifications are delivered silently.

Maybe I should just silence everything else on my phone too...

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You should spend a few hours turning the useless ones off, making the non-urgent ones silent, and filtering the important ones. For each notification, ask yourself "do I need to know this now?" If not, turn it off.

My phone only lets calls and instant messages through. Bank notifications are silent. Everything else is turned off.

Then filter email the same way. My inbox is a sacred space. It's similarly quiet.

It made a big difference for me. I get sidetracked a lot, and reducing interruptions and unnecessary information helped.

I wrote the exact steps I took here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence

I've done this years ago and it's been great. The only push notifications I have left are text/whatsapp.

I just wish Android had better controls for notification sound. E.g., if my whatsapp groups get chatty I silence my phone. But if my wife calls I want it to ring.

> But if my wife calls I want it to ring.

Turn on Emergency Bypass for her contact. I have an iPhone so don’t know what Android calls it, but I know it has the same feature.

I think there's room for a feature here: for approved contacts, notify them I'm busy when they try to call or message and ask if they want to interrupt. I think some desktop IM apps had that some time ago, but I haven't seen it on popular mobile equivalents.

The iPhone sorta has this with Focus Status Sharing and auto-reply to texts turned on. Clumsy/has caveats and is not quite what you said, but close enough to mention anyway.

iOS has this now with Focus Status Sharing; eg in messages others can see you’re busy and they caget extra options like ‘deliver quietly’ and ‘notify anyway’ - third party apps can do this too but not many have added it yet.

Isn't that do not disturb is for? Starred contacts work with WhatsApp too.

I have it set on a sleep schedule; only calls, texts or WhatsApps from a select few get through.

FWIW, I do inbox zero, with strict notification rules. If something interrupts me, it better be for a good reason.

WhatsApp let's you set notifications for individual chats, I think.

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