How to Stop Alert Overload and Take Your Life Back from the Red Dot

The notification overload is taking away our ability to do our jobs. We use so many apps for work every day, and each of them floods us with those notification red dots that stop us in our tracks.

Invest in Quality Tools Over Quantity of Tools to Reduce Notifications

We love downloading new apps. We’re a little addicted to it. We’re so bad at managing all of our apps that there’s now a whole economy of companies to help us cancel the apps we don’t need.

SaaS apps are really useful — and many of them are essential. But we’ve reached app overload; there are too many notifications, too many usernames and too many passwords.

Here are three questions I like to ask myself before downloading yet another streamlined solution

• Do I already have something similar?

• Does this help me with more than one function?

• Can the download be one-sided?

Each Employee Can Fight the Red Dot on Their Own

Like any behavioral change, resisting the red dot starts with small steps at the individual level. You might read these and say I can’t do this! What if I need to respond right away?

There are of course scenarios where you need to be plugged into notifications, but if we all take some minor measures, we can chip away at red dot culture.

But Leaders Hold the Power to Loosen the Red Dot’s Stranglehold on Our Workday

Individual contributors might justifiably be nervous to eschew standard notification protocol. True change begins up top, with a cultural emphasis on prioritizing meaningful work over red dot rage.

One-way Leaders Can Fight Notification Fatigue

Audit your apps

Dedicate an hour each month or quarter to combing through your suite of SaaS tools. Perhaps each department is required to delete their lowest usage app at each meeting. In addition to alleviating notification fatigue and burnout for employees, companies might save some subscription money as well.

Source: builtin