Updated headers

Author: khnumdev

_posts/2021-08-22-notifications.markdown

@@ -8,33 +8,35 @@ categories: phylosophy
 As we are living in a world with everything is a notification/popup/click-bait I'm going to share some actions that I've taken since a year and a half ago to minimize the impact. 
 The main idea is not to be a *slave* of devices and to have the control about what I want to read and when, something that could sometimes be hard due the continue notification exposition of any kind (apps, email, phone, etc)
 
-## Work / Personal
+## Organizing your tools
 
-On my previous company I have a smartphone for evertyhing involved with the job: I had my professional email there with the installed Outlook application and the authenticators apps required. Sometimes I received some call or several times I use the phone to join for some conference because at that particular moment Skype/Teams/Webex/Zoom was down. But having the email in the mobile device it was too easy to check anytime if there is something new or something that I have to take care off. 
+### Work / Personal time
+
+On my previous company I have a smartphone for evertyhing involved with the job: I had my professional email there with the installed Outlook application and the authenticators apps required. Sometimes I received some call or several times I use the phone to join for some conference because at that particular moment Skype/Teams/Webex/Zoom was down. But having the email in the mobile device it was too easy to check anytime (including outside working hours) if there is something new or something that I have to take care off. 
 
 As the mobile device was a Windows Phone, at some point the Outlook application was not working and I could not have the email synced in the phone. This means the only way to check the email was using the work computer or adding the email to my personal phone. So I decided to check the email only when I had the work computer running... and that was fine. Other time we could discuss about how email interrumptions break your work, but at moment let's park it here.
 
 Regarding work computer, I have only what is required for working. The only *license* that I allow to myself is to have Spotify app installed with my personal account because I am using it all the time. Rest of programs that are on the computer are related for my activity: IDEs, Office 365/Gmail apps, etc. No access with my personal account to other things such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Telegram, Whatsapp, YouTube, banks, etc. If I want to sign up in these place I will use my personal computer or more specifily, a different computer than the one I use for working.
 
-As expected, nothing from my work is present on my personal computer. I have a different username / email address for working appart from the official ones. This allows me to have a clean computer with a physic and logic separation between work and personal stuff. I spoke about this [several years ago in 2016 Mindcamp](https://www.slideshare.net/AndrsPrezGil/how-to-work-at-home-250126914) 
+As expected, nothing from my work is present on my personal computer. I have a different username / email address for working appart from the official ones. This allows me to have a clean computer with a physic and logic separation between work and personal stuff. I spoke about this [several years ago in 2016 Mindcamp](https://www.slideshare.net/AndrsPrezGil/how-to-work-at-home-250126914). 
 
-## Phone
+### Phone
 
 By default, my phone is always in silence with only vibration unless I switch it on when I'm going out for a reason. It is true that I see everything incoming through the smartwatch which it helps me a lot to not check the phone to see if I have something new.
 
 In addition, I spend time to disable notifications in apps and sounds. For example, during night I have enabled "do not disturb" mode, so I'm going to see only my closest family notifications.
 
-No notifications from messaging apps and I have silence all the groups I am. The reason is clear: to decide myself when I want to see something instead of being the phone.
+No notifications from messaging apps and I have silence all the groups I am. The reason is clear: to decide myself when I want to see something instead of being the phone brings the attention to me.
 
 And of course, if there is an app that I don't use I've prefer to remove it. iOS has a nice feature which is that it *soft remove* the application to save space. But if is not used, I've remove it.
 
-## Personal computer
+### Personal computer
 
 Same as phone, no popups no sounds. I close the applications that I'm not using at the moment; as an instance, I close messagging apps such as Telegram when I don't want to be distracted instead of using the "do not disturb" mode.
 
-Time ago I had my desktop with many things and without any kind of organization, as the extreme to have the screen full of icons for the main monitor and even for the secondary one. I've changed that. Now my desktop is clean, no files, no folders. Only if I have to do something I have the folder there and then, or I remove it or I move it to its right place. Also, I've clean the downloads folder with some frequency. 
+Time ago I had my desktop with many things and without any kind of organization, as the extreme to have the screen full of icons for the main monitor and even for the secondary one. I've changed that. Now my desktop is clean, no files, no folders. Only if I have to do something I have the folder there and then, or I remove it or I move it to its right place. Also, I clean the downloads folder with some frequency. 
 
-## Emails / Social networks
+### Emails / Social networks
 I have several emails (work, personal, etc) and I as many of you I had dozens, hundreds or even thousand without reading them. So the option is clear: delete them:
 - If they are from a suscription, unsubscribe them unless I'm going to read them at some point. If for example there are several weeks without read them probably I'm not going
 to read them again, so why having them increasing my email list?
@@ -44,16 +46,16 @@ to read them again, so why having them increasing my email list?
 
 The idea is to keep the emails to 0 without reading it. That notification hurts!
 
-Another important think is the consideration of an email and messages. They are an **asyncronous** way of communications, which means that it is feasible that you are going to wait time until you answer them. How much time? Could be hours, days. The one you think reasonable. If something is **urgent** use the phone. If not, it is something that can wait.
+Another important think is the consideration of an email and messages. They are an **asyncronous** way of communication, which means that it is feasible that you are going to wait time until you answer them. How much time? Could be hours, days. The one you think reasonable. If something is **urgent** use the phone. If not, it is something that can wait.
 
 Same idea with social networks. There are plenty of groups in Telegram/Discord/Slack than can be interesting, but does it worth it to be there forever and have >1000 messages pending for reading per group? More than the group is silenced I evaluate if that group provides me value or not. Let's say that I'm in a group more than 180 days without checking the messages. Probably the best option is to get out instead of ignoring it.
 
-## Rules
+## General Rules
 
 So as the general rules that I've applied for handling the notifications are:
 - Disable push notifications as much as possible.
 - Keep organized your apps/icons. Only have the those ones you use.
 - Use *do not disturb* mode / whatever name has in your OS, specially during spare/out of work time.
 - Remove any subscriptions/maillist/groups not used in your email and social network groups.
 
-Just remember that everything are tools for helping you doing things. If you realize that you are living for your social networks / email etc, please consider to stop, breath, think and discover that your life is outside.
+Just remember that everything are tools for helping you doing things. If you realize that you are living for your social networks / email etc, please consider to stop, breath, think and discover that your real life is outside of them.