I turned on every notification for a month | Hacker News Reader

I turned on every notification for a month

blog.rescuetime.com

29 pointsjorymackay16 comments

It looks like the author wrote this to sell software. I tried scrolling down on my phone and got a full-page pop-up trying to sell me software. Not cool.

Totally. Click baity title. Interested because it sounded like a horror story - was just either his own software or affiliate marketing.

Yes, I can’t tell if his page is an advertisement disguised as a blog, or if it’s genuinely meant to be a blog.

Even the point they’re trying to make isn’t well backed-up:

> Many would double up their notifications sending both a native one and an email. For example, if someone messaged me on LinkedIn, that would trigger a notification in the app, plus an email to let me know.

Obviously, you turned on all notifications! Maybe some people like an email notification, and some like an app-based one. What’s the alternative: deny some people their preference? Surely this only matters if one of the notification methods can’t be disabled?

Similarly, my home security system is set up in a fashion that allows either [app notification], [email notification], or [text notification] - (or any combination of the three).

I can certainly see valid use cases where a user would prefer one over the other. Not sure anyone would prefer all three to be turned on, however, which appears to be similar to what the author opted for.

Personally, I couldn't imagine getting notifications for everything.

I have my emails set up to just display a number on the icon. Some other semi-important apps similarly. But a text message is important - so that goes off. Wife could have a flat tire or need a quick answer (arguably a flat tire on the side of the road justifies a call, but who knows these days).

I guess my main thing is that if my phone goes off in my pocket, I want to make sure I'm pulling it out for, at least what could be, a justifiable reason - and not because someone replied to something that I said on Facebook earlier this morning.

> if my phone goes off in my pocket, I want to make sure I'm pulling it out for, at least what could be, a justifiable reason

There's an intermediate stage between "no notification" and "urgent notification" -- you can configure notifications from different apps to play different sounds.

Actually, I don't think there is. In my experience, a notification, even if it tells you explicitly "I'm not as urgent as others" for instance by sound, is still a distraction. I found that I feel and work better with having only the most urgent notifications on - even my phone is often left in DnD mode. Notifications degrade quality of life a lot.

> Maybe some people like an email notification, and some like an app-based one.

And I still wonder why we can't have notifications depending on where the user sees it first. Whenever I turn on wifi on my tablet(once a week or so) I get flooded with dozens of old notifications I already cleared on the PC or phone. YouTube somehow manages to host countless videos with amazing technology in the background but their website and app can't remember which comments I've already seen, and sometimes which language and color scheme I've set manually. It's so uncanny to have such modern technology mixed with bugs and behaviour that I'd only expect from a hobby project.

Same feeling here.

The irony of receiving a notification 30 seconds into reading was not lost on me.

I stopped reading at that point though ..

Keep going! 60 seconds in, it throws a huge pop-up at you.

As this is evidently an advert for Rescue Time and I'm a real sucker for anything productivity related, has anyone tried it out? Any interesting results to report?

I didn't like the idea of a service that sent all my visited websites to some remote server so I never got round to using it. Is that info at least encrypted so only you can see it?

I prefer Cold Turkey. It’s both cheaper (one-time fee to unlock all features) and doesn’t send data anywhere.

No. It's only encrypted "so only you can see it" if it never touches a remote server.

Anything that ever touches a server you must assume is done so in plain text (including passwords).

My 6 year old tries that with every “free” game installed.... it’s a nightmare!

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