My phone doesn’t vibrate anymore. That’s it. That’s why. I’ve turned off all my notifications. I am no longer reachable by iMessage, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., until I actively choose to open them. If you need me, my phone still rings. If it’s important enough to need my attention quickly—but not worth a phone call—you can also message me on Signal¹. If you’re a friend or acquaintance and don’t care for the philosophy behind it, that’s all you need to know. You can stop here.

For everyone else, the following paragraphs contain my more in-depth thoughts on the topic.

To put it simply, turning off my notifications has changed my life. Whether it’s for the better or not is hard to say. Health-wise, I can confidently say that the boost in productivity and mindfulness you get out of not carrying a buzzing distraction rectangle with you at all times cannot be overstated. In regards to socializing, I can say I’ve missed more than a few messages I would’ve preferred to see sooner. Under this “kill the buzzer” model, you are forced to make active decisions. Every time I text a friend and want to keep up with their response, I must make an active decision to do so. Point being, it makes it a lot easier to forget about things that aren’t worth your time. And that’s not even out of malice! There are a lot of people I care for dearly, but that I don’t/can’t/shouldn’t prioritize. Now, without the buzzer, I can attend to those people only when I have the time and energy to dedicate my full attention to them.

In that way, killing the buzzer gives you a good intuitive sense of who and what really matters to you at the moment. And, by consequence, you are then empowered to question those things. When you force yourself to put in effort to respond and be on the ball in conversation, you’re forced to give a shit about the people you’re talking to. The smartphone has been built to be intuitive, easy to use. The issue is that intuition removes agency. When it’s so intuitive that you do it without thinking, you’re no longer making a decision. It’s not happening with you, it’s happening to you. You are not in control—the phone is.

Let’s play a game. If you keep your notifications on, I want you to scroll through the lists of people that can contact you at—and I say this with as much gravitas as I can muster—any second of the day. I want you to look through and ask yourself, “do all of these people really deserve unfettered access to my attention span at any given moment?” The answer will undoubtedly be no, if you look for long enough. So what do you do? Block the people you think don’t deserve access? No. This is only a bandaid solution. You need to step back. What should the default be? Should the default status of someone who adds you on any of these channels of communication be “able to reach you whenever they want”? When you put it in words, it sounds like a nonsense question. “Why would you even ask that? Of course not!” Yet, somehow, this is the default state of affairs for a concerningly large portion of the populace. We ride the wave of automatic curation and allow feeds to sway our mind. A feed of notifications from strangers, friends, marketers alike; a feed of news shortened down to shouted, high-energy ten-second bites where the author is thrice removed from the original source; a feed of images designed to make you feel inferior about yourself; a feed of ads scarcely interspersed with thoughtful content, and the thoughtful content sometimes infested with ads too.

The digital age has made us the ultimate consumer—all we do is consume. There are hundreds of people you’ll meet where the only recreation they have is movies, TV, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and the like. Often enough, the only group recreation you can get some people to reliably do is consumption. So, what do we do?

The answer is a lot simpler than you think. In fact, it might even be counterintuitive to many:

Be kind to yourself.²

“But, wait, didn’t you just say that we’re the ultimate consumer? Our lives are worse and we’re less thoughtful people?”

Yes, I did say… something along those lines. But, you’ll notice, at no point did I ever ascribe the fault to you, the reader, the consumer³. In fact, you’re the victim here. You’re the one who’s been wronged. You’re the one who deserves compassion and sympathy.

So, give yourself that compassion. You’ll never rid yourself of toxic influence in your life if you try to be punitive and strict with yourself. Be thoughtful, and in those thoughts, be understanding yet rigorous. You’ll make excuses. Allow yourself to make them, then identify them as the weaselly justifications they are. Then ask yourself what you should truly be doing. Is there a better way to do things?

This is all pretty abstract, mostly because I could list two hundred different ways to be more mindful and thoughtful in your daily life—and the list would get less and less useful with every entry. I’ll leave you with the advice I began with: turn your notifications off. Kill the buzzer. It’s easier than you think.

If you think you need those notifications, try to investigate why exactly you think you need them. Do they align with your goals? Your values? Do they do you more good than harm? And, crucially, is the notification the sticking point? Because you can always make an exception for the really important things. If some friend won’t stay on good terms if you don’t respond instantly, they’re not worth your time.

And you don’t even have to turn them off entirely—I sure as hell didn’t! I have an iPhone, and I take advantage of the scheduled summary feature. One scheduled summary set for midnight each night. That way, my phone never buzzes, and I can see notifications when I want them (and I can do it without being on Do Not Disturb mode all the time⁴). Even if you’re not willing to give it a shot today, keep it in the back of your mind. I beg of you, look at your phone more warily, more cautiously. It’s an inanimate object, sure, but that doesn’t stop it from having a terrifying level of sway of your mental state. A car is also an inanimate object, but you wouldn’t want to be hit by one. Kill the buzzer. Set yourself free.