My kids hate it that when my phone buzzes I don't look at it right away. I do sometimes miss important things, but not being a slave to my device is wonderful.
It has been about 10-years ever since I divorced from almost all forms of notifications on all device types, and had almost always had the ringer to silenced. And I think it has been about 5-years ever since I default to DND and only selectively have a list with set number of people who can ring me.
It has angered quite a lot of people but has been a life-changer. I tend to either batch-call the missed ones or just ignore. Of course, there are calls that are scheduled.
I even have a website dedicated to that effort. Feel free to steal the idea - https://phone.wtf
Something I find very annoying is apps with useful notifications that also prod you with basically ads to open the app. Like Okcupid is an app where I’d like to know if someone messages me but absolutely do not need the daily 6pm prompt that tells me “now is a great time to log on!”. Generally gives me a bad taste.
Yep I disable notifications on all of those. Especially food delivery and taxicab apps where notifications would be super useful.
App companies need to understand that my life does not revolve around their app. It’s a tool that I don’t want to think about when not in use. If you are legitimately a good solution to my problem, I will remember when I need you. Please leave me alone otherwise.
You're fighting the good fight but I don't think you'll win this one. I am a fellow adherent to the philosophy that I am the owner of my phone, not the other way around. Mostly people just accept that this is just an unusual preference and not a personal slight against them but I too have been on the wrong side of some angry people. I've noticed the ratio of people who are ok with it is dropping though. We are evolving a cultural expectation of 24/7 instant communications response and opting out of that is offensive for some people.
I've never seen anger from people for not responding right away (unless it's time urgent and we've discussed it beforehand, such as meeting up at a location and one party is late), and I'm relatively young. All of my friends just respond when they can, it's known that it's an asynchronous medium.
i never had anyone complain, but if i miss a call and feel they need an explanation (maybe because it was important or urgent) then i just apologize and tell them that i have to keep my phone on silent when i work. and i prefer it silent in the evenings when i don't want to be disturbed. or kids are sleeping, etc. for in between i just forgot to turn the sound on (which is what i actually do if i am expecting a call)
that covers most of the waking time, so if they want to argue that's a hint that they are probably not very good friends. and if they are not friends to begin with then i just tell them to stuff it. they are not my boss and i am not here to do their bidding, and i already apologized to forgetting to turn the sound on when expecting their call.
More than half of the calls I make are not picked up immediately. Whatsapp is usually several hours of delay for a response. If it would be a day, I would not be upset, and most people aren't. I really do not understand what the fuss is all about.
That's hardly a new phenomenon though. Back in the day when getting a phone call was arguably a bigger deal (and before there were answering machines), there were the people who were perfectly comfortable having sat down to dinner were not going to get up and there were the "Aren't you going to get that?" people.
Definitely, although I used to be a "aren't you going to get that" kind of person back when a phone call was unusual. The frequency of "calls" now is just insane and the signal to noise ratio is now near zero, and that is what (I believe) has led to my change of philosophy.
I still have a landline (wife seems attached to it? It is a waste of money IMO). I remember as I child being excited when the phone rang, what if it is my friend calling? Now it induces rage as the calls are 98% scam calls.
You can consider porting your landline number to a VOIP service (I use voip.ms) and after that it's nearly free. I bought a basic Linksys modem (SPA2102) so that we can still plug in our cordless phones in an use them normally.
As a bonus you can set up simple filtering so that you don't get many spam calls. For me, all calls that have an anonymous or 800 number in the caller ID get redirected to a voice prompt that asks the caller to press 9 to talk to us; all other calls just ring our phone directly. You could also use whitelists, blacklists, etc.
It's both better and cheaper than a regular landline...
I took the plunge when I canceled cable TV a few years back. It would be useful as a backup now and then (although my Internet seems pretty stable--my unassisted cell service is pretty poor) but not $40/month useful.
I admit I don't get a huge number and very little outright junk. It was one of the things like made me mildly resistant for a while to get rid of my landline because I'm very selective about who I give my phone number to. Nowadays, for various forms requiring it, I just use a work number that I don't know how to retrieve messages from even if I wanted to.
I had this experiment forced upon me recently by being mugged a few weeks ago and having my iPhone stolen. I had to wait four days for my replacement Pixel to arrive and so I was stuck using my laptop for anything involving the internet.
I absolutely hated it; it didn't help that I was looking for a job, but every time I went outside, I was worried that there was an email I was missing, or that a disaster was happening, and I was unable to react to it. I also really hate basically everyone else's choice in music so when I had to hear that in stores it annoyed me. When there was an issue that involved my rebooting my server, I had to walk to my laptop and restart it instead of ssh'ing with my phone.
I am very thoroughly convinced that the unplugged lifestyle is just not for me.
I mean, it was only four days, so it's possible that I would have grown to like it, and it's entirely possible that my experience would be different if I were employed, because it's possible it would be nice to be able to not look at work Slack every thirty seconds while I'm out.
But all that being said, it just wasn't for me. I didn't enjoy it, and even though I hate my Pixel, it's still better than being without a smartphone.
the biggest issue for me in situations like this is having to change my routine, so i can totally feel the unease of not having a working phone like you used to. things that you did automatically (like getting notified of emails) you now have to make an extra effort to check. but you can find a new routine, and eventually get used to it.
when my phone broke, my biggest irritation was that i could not listen to audio-books while outside. seems the primary function of my phone is to be an mp3 player...
I know some folks that do this and indeed I do hate it. But not because I'm a slave to my device. I hate the buzzing because you should just put it on silent if you don't care about the notifications. It's pretty annoying to have to hear a buzz or ringer in an otherwise quiet room, and it gets to the hate level when you clearly don't even need it on.
It annoys me either way. Just put your phone on silent (unless you have certain contacts that need to get through in an emergency).
It's especially annoying when you don't look at your phone because you're just making noise for no reason. It's on the same level as playing music through your phone on the subway with no regard for those around you.
I know someone who will sit there for an hour texting people and each text that comes in rings the phone. They're literally staring at their phone and think that they need the ringer on.
but since our phones are ad-delivery platforms, they only give you the minimum amount of flexibility to solve it. So that person is helpless trying to choose between not knowing when somebody texts or having the phone ring all the time. It's not their fault that they don't have any reasonable option.
That's exactly it. The companies behind the devices have a negative incentive to solve the annoyance issue for you, since your annoyance (attention) is their flow of income.
Like why do I need to be repeat notified if someone texts me 3 times quickly in a row? We ought to have some kind of an agent system that can handle these things somewhat intelligently. Apple is doing a little better in this regard, but I can't help but feel that in the OSS world we would have had a bunch of solutions to this by now. In a fragmented fashion with terrible usability, of course.
My favorite bit of Apple user experience is when I get a text and don't read it immediately. My phone will buzz me again two minutes later to really reinforce the urgency.
> but since our phones are ad-delivery platforms, they only give you the minimum amount of flexibility to solve it.
Three actions (volume button, tap, tap) on my Android to turn my phone from ringer on to silent isn't that bad. And even though I don't have an iOS device, I'd hardly say they're built to be ad-delivery platforms. iOS isn't really in the ad business as much.
My biggest problem is forgetting to un-silence it. I'll literally go days and miss tons of important calls/texts before I remember to check. I used to do that all the time but stopped after missing a some very important calls.
It's annoying, period. You're forcing me to listen to your life events in an annoyingly prodding manner.
However, I can tolerate it if there's reasoning. If you simply don't care and let a device make incessant irritating noises, now you're just being annoying.
what sort of frequency are we talking here? Because the frequency that my kids get annoyed by it is maybe once a week. Most of the time my phone is in my pocket and nobody else even knows it's buzzing. The kids only know when I have the phone in my hand and they are nearby, or if they are looking at my phone (which is rare). I don't think it warrants a solution like silencing, which mainly serves to ensure I miss everything until days later when I remember to turn it back to vibrate.
Putting the annoyance aside for a second, I think this is partly a difference of viewpoints when it comes to what constitutes being a "slave to your device" as you say.
Having the phone on vibrate or the ringer on all the time feels like being way more attached to your phone than having it on silent. Vibrate/ring means the phone gets your attention immediately all of the time. Silent means I decide when I give the phone attention.
Back to the annoyance, I know two people who like to think they're not attached to their device and leave it at home when they're out. But then when I'm visiting and they're out running an errand or something, their phones ding and ding and ding and there's nothing to do about it (since I'm not going to silence their phone for them...). I have lots of stories like this.
Of course, this all stems on me being baffled that someone would go days without checking their phone.
> I know two people who like to think they're not attached to their device and leave it at home when they're out.
This baffles me. Like, 80% of the reason I even have a phone is to be able to communicate/look up needed information when I'm away from home. It's when I don't leave my house for a few days that I might find I missed a bunch of important messages.
> Back to the annoyance, I know two people who like to think they're not attached to their device and leave it at home when they're out. But then when I'm visiting and they're out running an errand or something, their phones ding and ding and ding and there's nothing to do about it (since I'm not going to silence their phone for them...). I have lots of stories like this.
This would heavily annoy me too and is absolutely deserving of criticism. However I think that is a very different problem than having a phone that vibrates in your pocket that somebody occasionally feels because they're sitting next to you or holding your phone (my kids sometimes take pictures for example). The two might seem somewhat similar at a high-level, but the fact that one includes the phone being on the person and the other does not, that seems like a huge difference to me.
A better alternative that doesn't annoy your loved ones would be, to connect your phone to a smart watch.
Keep the phone on silent enable notifications on the watch. You get to keep an eye out for anything important while being away from the phone takes a bit of effort to reply immediately.
Im using an older garmin watch and it works perfectly, it even has a silent zone setting so I never get disturbed when I sleep. Also has a really neat feature where I can ask the watch to ping my phone if I cant find it, so when I get an important message and I need to find the phone I could quickly find it.
I find people constantly looking at their watches while having a conversation to be incredibly annoying.
With my phone, all I have to do is reach into my pocket and hit to volume button to stop the vibration, I never need to break eye contact with the people I'm talking to. With a watch, they seem to always have to look down at it, even if they're dismissing the notification.
I have a Pixel watch and that covers about 25% of the notifications. Texts it's good for, calls it's great for, Slack it's meh for, email it's terrible for. There are more, but suffice it to say, it's not the silver bullet you make it out to be.
I think there's a useful distinction with silent notifications. I think someone would have to be crazy to get a beep or buzz for an incoming email, but a notification dot I can check when I see it won't unduly grab my attention.
If you don't care about the notifications anyways....then turn them off/silence them. Switch from an event-based model to a polling one, since you're treating it that way anyways.
I couldn't care less how quickly someone responds to their phone. I do care about sitting somewhere and hearing someone's phone buzz and ding-a-doop constantly. Especially if they don't seem to even care about what those notifications are for.
I do this and highly recommend it. Most apps (nearly all) have disabled notifications. I check things on a cadence and it's amazing how freeing this can be.
Whenever I meet with my parents it doesn't count until my dad's phone starts loudly chiming notifications when you try to concentrate on something. At moments like that, I understand why I'd rather live away from parents or would never own a dog. For some reason, my parents tell that they don't mind sudden distractions, while I just can't stand these.
Honestly when I discovered the dnd feature and even the simple ones like sleep mode. It's been a godsend. It's automatic and I only use the phone "casually" when in the bathroom.
My family hates it when I leave the house without my phone. I seldom carry it with me. There is a whole world out there further than 18 inches in front of your nose.
As it is, they have to deal with the nuisance of you buzzing and they know you're going to probably ignore any important things they send your way. At least turn notifications off so you can spend time with your kids distraction free and it's not a total lose-lose for all involved.
Well, I guess you're getting a feeling of self-righteousness in front of your kids...
> As it is, they have to deal with the nuisance of you buzzing and they know you're going to probably ignore any important things they send your way. At least turn notifications off so you can spend time with your kids distraction free and it's not a total lose-lose for all involved.
> Well, I guess you're getting a feeling of self-righteousness in front of your kids...
I appreciate the parenting advice and the free psychoanalysis, but what you may not know is that I have special settings for "known contacts" that ring differently. Depending on what I'm doing, I also usually check within a few minutes to see what it was, so it's not like I'm just sending all the stuff to /dev/null
not at all, when my phone is ringing (if it isn't on silent as usual) then one of my kids will come running excitedly telling me about it or even bringing the phone to me. not looking at it then means rejecting their effort to help me. it's like someone (not me, for sure) has told them that answering a phone right away is important. (but wait, i get annoyed if i call them (without a phone) and they don't respond, and i'll probably get annoyed if they ignore my phone calls in the future, so there is that)
