Field experiment: a day without notifications against a normal day · 2017
Productive, Anxious, Lonely: 24 Hours Without Push Notifications
Pielot M, Rello L
What it found
With every notification alert switched off for a day, people felt less distracted and more productive. They also felt less able to respond as others expected, which made some anxious, and less connected. About two thirds planned to change how they handle notifications, and two years later about half still did.
Where the evidence stops
Thirty volunteers, one day, self-report.
How it shapes Pursue
Pursue
Total silence is not the answer either. Pursue aims for selective quiet, not none at all.
A design input, not evidence that Pursue works.
Cited in
- 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
- 02Should I turn off notifications completely, or batch them?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.Interruptions and attention