Last week, I mentioned what your responsibility is as a sender, or as an initiator of contact with someone, and when is it OK to hit that send button or make that call. This week, it’s about what can you do as a recipient.  In other words, how do you manage your notifications?

First things first. YOU have to decide where you want to get your work messages and calls, and where you want to get your personal messages and calls. Some business pro’s have a business phone and a personal phone. Some have a desk phone (shop phone), a home phone, a personal mobile phone, a home and a work computer, maybe a tablet in each place too. Do you separate each piece and use a dedicated piece for work and for home? Do you use the same devices for everything? Or, do you have some devices that are work only, some that are personal life only, and some that do both? I would say this is where most people fall.

If you only have devices that are specific to work and a separate set that is specific to your personal life, you are a rare commodity. Most people either share everything or at least something. For me, I have a work laptop, a personal laptop, a personal iPad, and a mobile phone that is used for work and personal. This is pretty typical. My setup. I don’t have any work stuff on my personal laptop or my personal iPad, but I have both on my phone. The question becomes, Can you get only work stuff during work hours and personal stuff during personal hours? The answer is YES!!

You first thought may tell you if you even want to do this. If you think WHY would I want to turn one on or off?, you probably don’t want to or need to do anything – just let the notifications come in. If you’re asking that question, you’re not bothered by work emails during a family picnic, or notifications from your fantasy football chat room during a business meeting. If this is you, no problem with this whatsoever. Personally, I am not wired this way. My Grandfather used to say “When it’s time to work, you work, and when it’s time to play, you play.” I still try to live by these words today, but it can be hard in the digital age. Perhaps that was the basis for starting this piece. It aggravates me when I see a person answering emails on vacation with their family or at dinner, or on a work call on the golf course. In my opinion, if you have stuff that is that pressing, you shouldn’t be doing anything else (vacation, dinner, or playing golf). Do your work to get that done, and THEN you can relax and enjoy your time off. Don’t start your time off, then go back to work, take care of that, and then resume your time off. Your mind isn’t fully committed to either task. Remember, when it’s time to work, you work. When it’s time to play, you play.

Got it. But I’m the recipient. Someone didn’t get the memo last week and sent me an email on Sunday afternoon. I saw it, I read it, and I had to answer it. Yep, it happens. You can take steps to prevent this – if you want to. If all your devices are a single duty (either work or personal), leave them alone when you are not in that mode. Simple. If your devices do double duty (like my mobile phone does), you have choices. If you want to unplug from everyone and everything, leave it on your desk or your dresser at home and don’t look at it. Simple. What if you want only notifications from one group or the other, but only at certain times of the day? Luckily for you, we live in the technology age. You CAN do this.

I have an iPhone. iOS 17 has a feature called FOCUS modes. This is not a new feature, but it is evolving with each software update. Apple knows that we use our phones for everything, and work life blends with personal life to create a blur called life. if you don’t want it that way, they have created a tool for you to have it your way. Focus modes are a savior for those trying to achieve balance in their lives. You may have seen these, but not known what they were. Maybe you clicked on it and saw “Do Not Disturb” – nice, kill everything. What if you want some, but not all as we are talking about here? These are in there, you can add more if you want to, and you can get very detailed about what you allow (or don’t) in each mode. You could use a Personal Focus Mode for NON-business hours and a Work Focus Mode for business hours. You may have some crossover times. What does this mean?? You could turn off notifications for work emails during non- business times (the hours I mentioned last week). This means that if someone sends me an email at 9:30pm on a Tuesday night, I don’t see a badge on the app or get a notification on the notifications screen, but the message IS delivered. If I open the mail app, the message will be in there. The sender doesn’t know when you “receive” it, but I get these messages when I want them. Conversely, I do the same thing in reverse for my personal emails – I turn those off during business hours (M-F, 8-5) (See below for how I do this). Do I want an email from my bank at 3:00 in the afternoon? NO. Instead I get those on my time. FOCUS modes allow you to get the content you want WHEN YOU want it. 

You can do something similar with text messages in your focus modes (I don’t – too many contacts to set that up), but you could. Say you wanted to only get business texts and texts from your spouse, kids and parents during the work day – you can do that. Say you use X for business and Facebook and Instagram for personal – you can activate them in their respective focus modes on your iPhone. Focus modes carry forward across all Apple devices – so you will have the same modes set up automatically on your Mac and iPad (I turned them off because there is no business stuff on either device). 

Lastly, you can set these up on a schedule (business hours and non-business hours for example), and you can manually override them. There are plenty of options like this for Android users as well. Use modes like this to get your life in focus and in balance. Work when it’s time to work, play when it’s time to play. 

Want a simpler solution? On iPhone, you can utilize Scheduled Notifications. This is a simple setting where you can only select a single time of day to get a list of all NEW notifications from a specified app at a specified time. Personally, I think I prefer this to a focus mode for personal email. I use a scheduled notification on all non-business apps at 8am, 5pm, and 10pm. No need for me to be notified by these apps in real time. 

To truly be all in for work AND play, you have to set your mind free of the distractions of the the opposite part of your life. Try focus modes or scheduled notifications (or something similar). You’ll spend time tweaking the modes to get the balance right for you. In the end, it will be worth it for you. Hopefully this helps if you are looking for a way to declutter certain parts/ times of your day. Hopefully this will allow you to better focus on the task at hand and be a better business pro during the day, and be better at all things personal when you are not at work. Your notifications, your way, on your timetable. Try these modes on your devices and see what you think.

Last week I mentioned I’d chat about text vs. email. That WILL be next week. Promise. It’s already written.