Should I turn off notifications completely, or batch them?

PursueUpdated 10 October 20264 sources

Short answer

The best evidence favours batching. In a randomized field experiment with 237 people (Duke and Georgetown, 2019), getting notifications in three batches a day made people feel more attentive, productive and in control than the usual stream, while getting none brought few of those benefits and more anxiety and fear of missing out.

01Normal, batched or none

Researchers from Duke and Georgetown randomly assigned 237 people to receive phone notifications as usual, in three batches a day, or never. Compared with the usual stream, batching made people feel more attentive and productive, in a better mood and more in control of their phone. The group with no notifications got few of those gains and reported more anxiety and fear of missing out[1].

Two other studies explain why going to zero backfires. When volunteers switched off every alert for 24 hours, they felt more productive but also worried about not being as responsive as others expected, and less connected[2]. People want selective quiet, not silence.

02The same idea, with email

When 124 adults limited email checking to three times a day for a week, their daily stress was lower than in a week of checking freely, and lower stress went with better well-being[3].

Timing inside a task matters too. A system that held notifications until the person reached a natural break reduced frustration compared with delivering them immediately[4].

03Where the evidence stops

These are short field studies with self-reported outcomes. They test batching in general, not a particular number of batches, and three a day is what was tested, not a proven optimum.

Something to try today

Use your phone's scheduled notification summary, or a focus mode, to collect non-urgent notifications into two or three moments a day. Let calls and messages from a few people through, so being unreachable doesn't become its own worry.

Pursue

How Tre-Up approaches this

Pursue does not add to the stream. It sends at most one signal at a time, and when nothing needs to change it says nothing.

Tre-Up is an iOS app in development. Pursue is the AI inside it. This note describes research and design intent, not results from the app. Nothing here is medical advice.

Sources

Summaries are written in our own words from each source's abstract, public record or official text. Follow the link to read the original. How we write these notes

  1. 1.Fitz N, Kushlev K, Jagannathan R, Lewis T, Paliwal D, Ariely D (2019). Batching smartphone notifications can improve well-being. Computers in Human Behavior 101:84–94.Duke University · Georgetown UniversityOur summarydoi:10.1016/j.chb.2019.07.016
  2. 2.Pielot M, Rello L (2017). Productive, Anxious, Lonely: 24 Hours Without Push Notifications. Proceedings of MobileHCI 2017.Telefónica ResearchOur summarydoi:10.1145/3098279.3098526
  3. 3.Kushlev K, Dunn EW (2015). Checking email less frequently reduces stress. Computers in Human Behavior 43:220–228.University of British ColumbiaOur summarydoi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.005
  4. 4.Iqbal ST, Bailey BP (2008). Effects of intelligent notification management on users and their tasks. Proceedings of CHI 2008.University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignOur summarydoi:10.1145/1357054.1357070

Keep reading

All notes
  1. 01Do phone notifications hurt focus, even if I don't check them?Yes. In a 2015 Florida State University experiment, simply receiving a notification hurt performance on an attention-demanding task about as much as calling or texting, even when people never touched the phone. In a field experiment with 221 adults (Kushlev et al., 2016), people reported more inattention in the week their alerts were on.Interruptions and attention
  2. 02When is the right moment for a reminder or a nudge?When the person is able to take it in, which changes from moment to moment. In a trial with 1,255 users of a workplace well-being app (Bidargaddi et al., 2018), the same message made people about 4% more likely to use the app in the next day, and about 12% more likely at 12:30 on weekends.Timing and receptivity

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