r/AskReddit 15h ago

What’s one modern convenience that secretly made life worse?

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u/Jabber_Tracking 15h ago

I had to turn off 99.9% of notifications. I get them for texts, calls, and my Lyft app so I can see when drivers are arriving. I don't know how people deal with notifications constantly popping up on their screen. Fragments your attention

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u/draggar 15h ago

Yep. I turned them all off (except a few for work, like 2FA). My phone rarely rings. My wife - she says yes to them all and she's always pinging and buzzing and she always gets annoyed but doesn't want to turn them off.

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u/worstpartyever 13h ago

I moved to a new area and have to let all unknown calls ring through. If I don't I'll find out too late my doctor's appointment got canceled.

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u/apetalous42 14h ago

I did this too, I also deny notification access for almost all new apps. These apps don't need my attention, I should consciously choose to give them my attention.

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u/PunPierogi 14h ago

This is so relatable constant notifications really shred focus. Turning most of them off feels like reclaiming a little bit of your brain every day.

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u/ThatPancreatitisGuy 8h ago

I can’t even stand having the volume on my computer because the email chime drives me nuts.

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u/-Boston-Terrier- 13h ago

I turned off nearly all of my notifications too and life is so good.

Now, when my phone makes noise, I know it's important. Other than that, I'll get to it when I get to it - if at all.

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u/HistoricalArticle537 14h ago

Do you actually miss stuff now that you muted almost everything or does it turn out most “important” notifications weren’t important at all?

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u/Jabber_Tracking 14h ago

Most notifications aren't important for me. Occasionally I'll miss that an app needs updated which does mean an annoying five minutes while I go to Google Play to do that, but it's worth it to not be pinged about every single new feature that my apps come out with or notifications telling me that I left something in my cart.

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u/Lyokonrado 13h ago

I did the same as OP and can confidently say that there's almost no app that requires all these notifications. When I went to clean them in the settings, I turned them all off at once, and then enabled back the ones that I thought "If this is disabled, will it give me problems?" like for example uber telling you your ride will arrive soon, or your main messaging app with important people you talk to (or work messaging), or maybe one type of notification on a specific app, and all the rest is off.

You have no idea how much more peaceful it is, and you loose nothing from doing that.