Once I was a person who wanted to to follow as many things as possible related to topics and projects that interested me.
Once I was a person who lurked in many places to stay up to date with lots of stuff.
Once I was a person who subscribed to many newsletters and podcasts.
Once I was a person who wanted to be highly available to others.
I couldn’t keep up with the notifications.
Couldn’t keep up with the messages that pinged me.
Felt guilty because of piling unread notifications and messages.
Week by week, it became mentally harder to start going through those because of the feeling of betraying others and the time that would be needed.
A long time ago I learned from Rolle the habit of moving actionable items to a to-do list and heard about the two-minute rule originally from someone else. Been trying to utilize those habits for notifications and messages for quite some years.
Started slipping from those habits shortly before life happened and failed miserably after that.
Something needed to be done. No one can live with 1,000+ unread notifications constantly nagging. No one can live with keeping their mind up to date where some new notification might be important. At least not me.
Some weeks ago, I started purging those piled-up notifications. Not in any subtle way. Just pure purge for most of the notifications. I deemed that if the thing was or is important, I’ve heard or dealt with it in some fashion already. Or if not, it will pop up again at some point. If it does not, it was not that important or resolved itself without me.
During the process, I unsubscribed from many things and moved some to appear on more consolidated platforms like Feedly. That work will continue little by little as new notifications appear.
A hard reset was the only way to get back on top of the notification situation. There’s nothing to be ashamed of doing a hard reset. It’s better be on the loop again instead of being completely absent, even if some notifications are left unread and unfinished.