“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.” Jean Arp
Have You Heard of COVID?
Raise your hand if you are tired of hearing about the COVID-19 pandemic. I know I am. It is everywhere. You hear it on the radio in your car. It has gripped the news coverage for the last few months. All day long your virtual meetings and phone calls touch on how to survive this crisis.
Your email is full of messaging related to COVID.
Some of the information is important. Much of it is not.
But it is clouding out a myriad of other information relevant to your life and work. On a whole, this barrage of information is noise. Just as the sound of a blaring fire truck siren drowns out coffee shop conversation, the good pieces of digital information get lost in the volume of digital noise.
The physical world has physical noise, and similarly, the online world is full of digital noise. Even this article is a form of digital noise. With so many emails, articles and social media apps vying for your attention, we must actively suppress the worthless noise and amplify the useful sounds.
Kill the Bad Noise
The word noise often refers to unwanted sound. Oxford defines noise as “a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance.” Noise-cancelling headphones exist because we have the need to reduce unpleasant sounds while listening to beautiful or useful sounds.
Digital noise is far more pervasive, and often difficult to ignore. Worse, digital noise is usually undetected because it is specifically designed to take hold of your attention. Companies spend millions of dollars every year to study the psychology of how humans interact with physical and digital products. Sensation, bright colors, novel sounds, and trending topics are some of the many tactics employed by TV networks, social media, and web services.
Digital noise makes us reactionary.
Pinterest and Facebook were among the first websites to use the endless scroll concept. They provide a bottomless stream of pins, statuses and videos to keep your focus for as long as possible. Most of it is noise. Deliberate searches for a specific YouTube video are often followed by a lengthy rabbit trail of videos, resulting in the loss of many hours.
Digital noise makes us reactionary—but only if you tune in. Just like the radio in your car, you will listen to whatever is on that radio station until you take deliberate action to change the frequency.
The default is you’re in until you opt out. It is time we choose which sources to opt into.
Shutoff the Fire-hose
Take a specific look at what sources of information you are allowing into your day. How much of the news do you watch or listen to? Years ago, I stopped actively seeking out the news on a regular basis. Now, I only search for pieces of news that I am interested in learning more about. Am I worried about not being informed? No! If an event happens that I should know about, I will hear people talk about it or learn about it through alternate means. Most news is negatively bent and inaccurate.
If you are like me, you listen to podcasts while commuting to work. Are there any podcasts you listen to simply because you have listened to them for a long time? Evaluate whether you still require the information in those podcasts. If they are irrelevant, shut it off.
Social media captures a significant portion of human attention. While you may not be on every social platform, the chances are that you are on a handful. The endless meme stream, while entertaining, tends to waste more time than it is worth. Take a hard look at how much time you spend on social media. Usage tracker apps for mobile devices are plentiful—consider downloading one to collect your usage statistics for screen-time and app usage. I assure you it will be eye opening.
Each of these avenues of digital noise provide you with relevant and compelling information from time to time. If you use these tools purposefully, they will reap rewards and enhance your life. But, the creators of these tools have designed them to capture your attention and keep it for as long as possible. It is vital that you reduce digital noise by limiting use and optimizing how you use these tools.
Push(over) Notifications
Push notifications are sent by the billions everyday. In an effort to continuously capture the attention of users, apps and websites send notifications at an alarming rate. Push notifications work well because they exploit multiple angles of human psychology. Each time we see a notification and open it, we receive a hit of dopamine. This feels good and it trains our brains to continue to act on similar behaviors for future feel-good dopamine spikes. Not only do the apps on our mobile devices passively place notifications on the banner, they actively signal us with a beep or a vibration. Now, as long as the device is nearby, we are always aware of a new text message, email or social media update.
According to Business of Apps, the average person receives 46 push notifications every day. While some notifications are useful, most are a major distraction. I spent one month with my phone in Do Not Disturb mode, meaning I received no active alert of a notification in the form of a sound or vibration. Aside from missing a few unexpected phone calls, I was in no way negatively impacted. In fact, I found that my focus improved noticeably. Simply knowing I would not ever hear or feel my phone pushing a notification freed my mind of the continuous anticipation.
But I took it a step farther. Nearly every time I opened my phone, I found a notification waiting on the lock screen and in the banner at the top. Each time I looked at my phone, regardless of intent, my eyes automatically jumped to the top of the screen to see whether I had a notification. If a notification existed, I was confronted with the decision to open it now or wait until later. This is an issue because the essence of the notification remained; I was still distracted..
So, every time I had a notification on the banner at the top of my screen, I evaluated whether I wanted to continue seeing that type of notification. I turned off notifications that I did not want to receive. By turning off notifications I have reclaimed power over my attention from the apps on my phone.
Now, even with the phone set to vibrate mode, I receive a fraction of the notifications I did before. It is freeing. Currently, I do not allow any notifications to show on my lock screen, and most social media apps do not push any notification to my banner. My email app is not allowed to push notifications and does not even have a bubble on the icon to indicate an unread email. I check my email only a handful of times throughout the day. My phone has become a tool to serve a function rather than the source of distraction and fire-hose of digital noise.
Summary
In a world saturated with digital noise, the ability to filter and limit consumption is the key to retaining control of your attention. Critical thinking requires focus, and focus is unwavering attention on the task or problem at hand. Technology is a tool; it should not control you or your mind. Digital noise will only amplify in the coming years as content is created at supersonic speeds. Take ownership of your attention. Kill the distracting push notifications and limit consumption of news and media to the beneficial and relevant. Staying afloat in the surging sea of information requires purposeful action. Don’t drown your attention in the waves of digital noise.
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