We are often so focused on the task at hand that we forget we’re also thinking about what we are doing. We are so busy being mindful that we get distracted by thoughts of the future, not the past. That makes sense. As we start to lose our focus, we start to lose our awareness.
Sometimes we need a little help with being mindful. The best thing to do is to practice a skill or hobby once a week, or even more often. This helps us become more aware of our thoughts and actions and gives us the chance to reflect on them.
One way to practice awareness is by listening attentively to the music or podcasts you listen to while you read these articles. Another way is to try and get your attention in a way that makes you want to write about the content that you’re reading. But a third way to practice awareness is to turn off the notifications on your phone. With this method you can begin to notice when you’re distracted, and then turn your attention back on and go back to reading.
The good news is that you can turn off your notifications by going to your settings page. You will see a list of options, including “Notifications.” You can turn them on by going to settings.android.com, choosing Privacy, and clicking on the “Settings” menu item.
The bad news is that you can also turn off these notifications in the settings menu of your smartphone in many apps. This is a good idea, but it doesn’t stop the notifications from appearing on the screen. So even if you disable them completely, you might still be able to hear them at times.
For instance, I am an avid user of the Amazon Kindle app on my laptop, where it makes it so that I can read books without having to open the app. But when I got the Kindle, I was shocked to find that I could still hear the Kindle’s “Notifications” popping up on my screen (which I had turned off). So as I read, I couldn’t really stop reading without the notifications popping up. This is how you can control your notifications.
I am also an avid reader. I don’t typically open the Kindle app on my laptop because it has a terrible battery life, but the sound notifications were really bothering me. I thought I was losing my mind until I saw it wasn’t just me.
Of course the Kindle app works very well. However, the best way to get the notifications popping up is to not turn on your screen notifications. If you are not using a screen reader (like Safari) you have to do this. You can turn on the notifications by either long-pressing on the Kindle icon and selecting “Use Kindle with a screen reader” or by going to Settings->Reading and tapping on “Screen Reader”.
The good news is that the notifications are not just for Kindle users. It would be nice to make it so the notifications are only for Kindle users. I guess that would not be too hard since they use the same method for notifications for iPhone users. But it would be nice to at least have a setting for iPhones.
If you’re like me, you may not care about the notifications on your iPhone, but I do. They’re annoying, and I have been known to hit the mute button at random times and accidentally trigger a notification. They can be annoying when you have to go back to the notification center to view them again. There’s no way in hell I’d ever miss the notification center on my iPhone.
