> The point of notifications is the convenience of not having to constantly check your phone for every single app you have (amazon delivery? just eats delivery? uber booking? claude finished its task?).

My phone has been on DoNoDisturb since 2010 or so. Here's the reality: I don't check for any of those things. Delivery drivers can ring the door bell. If I'm very hungry I'll keep the app open and check where they are. I literally do not care to be notified about any of the things that apps want to notify me off.

Anyone who cares to reach me knows to ring the phone twice in case of emergency to get through DnD. Anyone else? The best time to call is text me. Or schedule a time.

As for Claude, the point of clankers is that they work in the background. The robot can wait, their infinite patience is a feature.

Same here! If this phone made an unexpected sound I'd smash it with a brick.

I guess you probably have no dependents and never been oncall then if you are on no disturb. For many people, having to poll the state of multiple ongoing tasks is time consuming itself or/and focus breaking enough that some apps are deserving of having notifications.

Manually polling multiple items as you go around your day is stealing valuable mental bandwidth that could be used in better things.

> Manually polling multiple items as you go around your day is stealing valuable mental bandwidth that could be used in better things.

I both agree and disagree with you. I disabled notifications for everything and found myself refreshing email too often. But if I have the notifications, I can get disturbed too often which also takes mental bandwidth.

For me I found the best tactic was to selectively enable notifications (whatsapp for just one person), and delete (not silence) everything else - I don't have email on my phone now - the temptation to check it is more than the need to have it. As for things like PagerDuty, I have it send an SMS and phone me instead.

> the best tactic was to selectively enable notifications (whatsapp for just one person), and delete (not silence) everything else

Hundred percent agree. I wouldn't support having notifications for everything enabled.

Oh I’m on essentially permanent 2nd tier oncall and occasionally 1st tier. Pagerduty has an exception configured. If you message me on slack it shows up on my home screen and I will probably notice in the next 15 minutes or so.

I find polling less disruptive because my phone or watch are almost always nearby. Being in control of when to get interrupted feels better than having stuff constantly pop up while you’re doing something.

Just holding my partner’s phone spikes my cortizol. You try to type 2 sentences and get 5 notifications for random other apps and messages popping up on screen in the meantime. Literally one notification every 10 seconds on average. It’s horrible

You know it is not a binary option, right? You can select what apps you want notifications from and most apps have at least two types of notifications you can toggle.

And the inconvenience to constantly having to check your phone

Your house already has a built-in notification system, which can be activated by the delivery guy, once he is physically at your location.

A built-in notification system that everyone from your local politician asking for your vote to your Jehovah Witness recruiter can and does abuse. Way to waste your time.

You can silence it just as easy and in difference to the digital alternatives, the amount of time wasted is symmetric.