Since forever I’ve battled with the addictive aspects of my devices, especially the social part.



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I often get asked "but who’s even messaging you so much?".



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The fact of the matter is that, it’s not about the amount of messages I get, it’s about the fact that I don’t seem to have any control or say when they arrive, when I read them or what my initial reaction will be.

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‍Dopamine being dopamine, whenever I finish up with a work session, I automatically gamble through a sequence of opening emails, then Slack, then LinkedIn, then Instagram, then WhatsApp, just to see if someone somewhere has instructed me to do something or if there isn’t a metaphorical piece of gold hidden somewhere.



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Finally having torn myself away from my laptop, I immediately reach for my phone to pull up from the bottom of the screen to see if there aren’t any notifications hidden there (??? bro ???).



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Realising that most of this pull is coming from WhatsApp, and having already blocked everything else on my laptop with ColdTurkey, I decided to try the seemingly extreme: switching off push notifications for WhatsApp entirely.



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The results? Liberation.



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I finally get to choose when I receive, read and reply to messages. It kind of feels like the old Mxit days, where you had to log in to chat, and log out when you’re done, and that’s that.



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Since disabling notifications, I never get unsolicited pings or vibrations, and best of all, when I pull up from the bottom of my phone’s screen, no notifications are shown - steadily rewiring my brain's System 1 impulse for seeking those 'rewards'.



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I know I always rant about this topic, but it is genuinely something that bothers me. If you struggle with it too, try switching your notifications off for a day or two, it might just be what you need.



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I also wrote a whole blog about my thoughts on social media that have many tools to help you fight the pull and win back your time and attention.