Ping. Ping. Ping.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Those little red dots, the indicators of something else I need to read (or do) are always there.
I feel pursued by notifications, overwhelmed by well-intentioned communication. And it is exhausting, creating a “digital fatigue.”
Anyone else feel this way?
Notification Overload
There are so many.
I try to limit what notifications I have turned on.
Currently I have text messages, primarily from my husband, friends, and family. Oh, and there are group texts too.
There is a school app for our son. Then there’s a daycare app for our daughter.
I have a personal email with notifications on for important stuff, and an email with notifications off for less important stuff.
We have two sports apps for the kids — ready to tell me where I need to shuttle a kid, by when, with what gear.
And then there are the work apps. I keep email notifications off, but chat is on during the day.
When I order groceries, those notifications come in too. Sometimes I have Target pickup orders that tell me when they are ready to go.
Then there are the calendars, plural.
I don’t have social apps on, but if you do, wow — I don’t know how you do it.
I’m sure I am forgetting something that tells me stuff I just have to know.
I can’t keep up.
Because of all the frequent, forthcoming communication, I can’t seem to read it all.
Then, when I miss something and hope for some grace, I am seemingly a deep inconvenience to the sending organization because they already told me. But I didn’t catch it, or didn’t retain it.
I wish they knew I’m not trying to be a pain. It’s just getting to be impossible to read and remember everything that is sent to me.
It never ends.
And even when I try to ignore those pesky notifications to focus, I can’t always do it. Our brains are wired to respond. I turn many notifications off, but because the information is sometimes important, it’s hard to do that.
Because I can’t turn them all off, it just keeps coming. All day, every day.
I wasn’t planning to write this to complain, but I guess I am. I can’t be alone, though, in the exhaustion that is all of the information.
Help!
Maybe it is also a plea that if you are someone sending out the information, please understand that it is increasingly difficult to consume all the information I receive in a day.
Please forgive me when I miss something!
As a parent I may need some grace when you already gave me the information, but I asked again anyway.
It is what it is.
The notification overload makes it nearly impossible to get it all right all the time.
And I’ll have to accept that I will miss stuff and deal with it when it happens. I need to give myself a little grace, too.
Perhaps I will even learn to ignore more notifications one day and not let them bother me. That will free up space for what really matters in life.
