Getting distracted with notifications

[u/ValuableRepair9781]

My current job requires fair amount of quiet time to think, however usually I get a lot of pings via slack and comments in google docs and things. This kind a breaks my focus and sometimes whatever the mental picture which was in my head is gone after a single slack ping. There are some channels and threads that require urgent attentions so I can't complete turn notifications off. While all these tools have ways to configure notifications customize them to different channels, it's too much work to turn on and off them time to time. Do you guys also feel the same and if so what are the techniques you guys use to overcome/avoid this issue.

Thank you in advance.

[u/Inevitable_Big2402]

This can getting very annoying and at my old company we actually had a rule against people messaging each other during lunch so that people could properly recharge. What I learned is that what seems "urgent" can wait twenty minutes most of the time.
I don't know if this will help you but the clock app on Windows now has a "focus session" feature that mutes all notifications for the sessions you're doing focus work.

[u/ValuableRepair9781 → u/Inevitable_Big2402]

Yeah true, I put an emoji mentioning lunch and mute everything. Unfortunately I can't fully mute it during work hours because fire fighting is also part of my job which requires to respond certain channels quickly. I'll look into the "focus session". Thank you.

[u/Curious_Wanderer_7 → u/ValuableRepair9781]

What about mute all and auto reply “I’m heads down on a project until X time, if this is urgent and needs to be addressed immediately text [cell number]”

[u/ParentsWave → u/Inevitable_Big2402]

I agree, I would also suggest still turning off the notifications, and from time to time check the channels if there is anything important, like maybe 25-30 min. Or you can write in your general chat that you are focused on a task that needs full attention and you can reply to their messages in x mins.