

Notifications are a UX Anti-Pattern - holympus
https://medium.com/p/c4d8c9ccce39

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greenyoda
" _email allows anyone to interrupt you, at any time, for any reason_ "

Only if you let them! Every e-mail system that I know of allows you to turn
off incoming mail notifications: you can get rid of the infernal beep, the
annoying pop-up message and even the little envelope icon. A good e-mail
system also allows you to automatically filter out unimportant messages (like
stuff sent to corporate mailing lists) so that the unimportant mail doesn't
even get to your primary in-box.

I look at my e-mail when I'm moving between tasks (e.g., finished writing some
piece of code). Many messages are not as urgent as they seem, and can easily
wait for hours or even days to be answered. Many problems fix themselves if
you wait for a couple of hours: people realize that they could have figured
something out themselves instead of asking you, or they realize that their
problem wasn't a really a problem ("oh, never mind"). If you answer your
e-mail too quickly, you frequently end up doing unnecessary extra work that
helps nobody.

Of course in some jobs, like network operations, you really need to reply to
messages quickly. But software developers can be much more productive if they
ignore their e-mail and maintain their focus on their code.

