Every time you download an application to your phone, you are presented with this seemingly benign decision. “<NAME OF APP> would like to send you push notifications?”

What if it looked more like this? “<NAME OF APP> would like to prevent you from getting anything done today”

Would you treat the question any different? “Don't Allow” probably becomes a lot easier to click.

This question is the first and most important in the framework to reduce your smartphone distractions.

At this step you will determine if an app will be able to alert you to whatever they deem worthy of interrupting your concentration.

Critically evaluating “Ok” vs. “Don't Allow” will turn this decision into a “workhorse” in limiting your notifications to a “need to know” status.

Be picky here. Make the decision if an app can send you a notification with the following mindset:

Is a notification from this app worth sacrificing 20 minutes of prime productivity?

According to a recent study the average person engages with their smartphone 46 times per day. Say you are awake 16 hours in a day and spend 8 hours of them at work. That means you engage with your phone ~23 times during the working day.

If you combine the math from the two studies above, 23 phone engagements during the work day * 20 minutes to regain productivity momentum, we never find “flow” during the workday. 

While this example is extreme and the implications of these independent studies probably can't be straight up factored in an equation, but I would argue that if you mix in meetings and other workplace interruptions the lack of “flow" finding assessment is not too far off.

The answer to this question can change from time to time. For example, with the March Madness NCAA tournament starting earlier this month and finishing up this week. I made the decision that I wanted to stay quasi up to speed with the tournament happenings. 

The point here is do yourself, your career, and your organization the favor of not allowing frivolous apps to be another workplace distraction. *names have been changed to protect the innocent.

#DeskJockey Challenge: Go through the notifications on your phone and make a call if the information the alert will provide is worth your interrupting your “flow”.

If "Don't Allow" is too tough of a decision for an app or two the next few questions in the framework provides a nice middle ground for those information nuggets you can't do without…

Up next-> Notification Location, taking an active role in when, where, how notifications are pushed to you.