After I install a program in my PC, the first thing I do is to disable all the sounds... and after I install an app in my phone, the first thing I do is to disable all the notifications.
On the flip side of that, I keep all notifications turned on and only selectively disable them when they start pushing complete nonsense or spam or ads to me. I get very focused and will forget to check email, forget to check Facebook, forget to check text messages, sometimes for days at a time. When I got an iPhone 6 and could no longer depend on the vibrate motor making an audible noise (seriously how terrible is the vibrations on the newer iPhones?) I got a Pebble watch so when the phone rings it actually physically sends me a push notification by buzzing.
Slack has this annoying habit on my work computer to not make an audible noise when I get a message even though that setting is turned on and I never check my Mac's dock when I'm working on something so I had to unhide the dock so I could see the notification come in.
Then again at one point in time I had alarms set on my phone telling me it was time to eat or time to go to bed because I will focus in on something so much that everything else disappears for hours at a time. Notifications help break me out of that to get back to the real world.
