I am on my way back to Mumbai from a much needed break. I spent the last week travelling across Malaysia and trying out all sorts of local cuisine. The night markets of Malaysia are worth visiting and if you are planning on travelling to Malaysia I would definitely recommend skipping the malls and trying out the street food.

I recently read this article which mentions about how push notifications was ruining the authors life. I read it and then forgot about it, until 3 days into my vacation.

Slack, Fastmail, Newton, Intercom, Whatsapp, Google Talk are all the apps on my phone which have push notifications enabled. It’s easy for someone to get in touch with me. Ping me on one of the apps and I will be quick to jump in and reply to your message.

While enjoying my car ride in Langkawi, my phone kept buzzing. Slack, Newton(my email client), Whatsapp and Google Talk were now asking for my attention. I was no longer looking out the window and enjoying the ride, but kept thinking about all the work that needed to be attended to once I was back in the hotel room that night.

Once back in my room that night, I re-read the article and decided to switch off all push notifications(but one). 99% of the apps on my phone don’t have push notifications enabled and I have been so much in the moment the last few days. I still got to all the messages which needed my attention, but at a time when I was ready to give them my attention.

I hope to write more about how I plan to get to things which require urgent attention, but I wanted to write about how notifications were indeed ruining my life.

Managing marketing projects shouldn’t be chaotic — Try Brightpod for free and start focusing on what matters.