The Notification I Look Forward To Most

You’ll find my attempt at a post with the aforementioned title, as suggested by Pablo Enoc via our post title trade! Read more about the initiative, or contact me if you’d also like to trade!

I’ll admit, when I received this title to write something with...I paused. How am I supposed to do this phrase justice, given I’ve had my phone on mute for the last four years?

I abhor notifications.

The first thing I do when signing up to a service, I go to settings and turn off all email updates. Whenever I receive a marketing-esque email, ‘unsubscribe’ is my first instinct. Subscribing to a newsletter via email is a last resort. I far prefer using my RSS reader.

It’s the same with browser, desktop, and phone notifications. Everything’s off, except the bare essentials: timers, VPN reminders, verification texts, and messages from family.

In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have any on, ever.

It’s something to do with my hyper-vigilance and anxiety. Anything red is a warning sign.

So how am I supposed to determine which one I look forward to the most?

Something I’ve been trying to learn is to allow a response to a question or idea to form that isn’t my instinctive, instant response. While this is helpful in countless situations, when faced with large or complex problems, the first answer isn’t always the best.

So, you’ve just read my instantaneous reaction. Here’s my more planned one.

I check my email more often than I’d like. I’ve not yet done the terrifying thing of counting how frequent the action is, because I know I won’t like the answer.

There are three main reasons: looking for an easy distraction when faced with an arduous task, a strange need to confirm ‘I matter to folks’, and an unfocused approach to achieving things.

So while creating a system about when and where I can refresh my inbox is important...that’s not the subject of this post. (At least, not the one I’m hoping to reach.)

Whenever I see an email in the list of unread ones, and it’s not an errant marketing email or a calendar reminder...my heart does an asynchronous skip.

For lo! There it is. An email from a family member, friend, or internet acquaintance. A person who took time out of their hectic existence to make contact. What an honor, what a thrill!

It gets me every time.

Why don’t I hold onto that feeling instead of anxiety over imagined emails that don’t exist?

What’s changed isn’t the technology. Email has remained consistent while social platforms reinvented themselves every other week. What can change is how I choose to engage with it.

In a world of loud broadcasts, an email from a person feels like a whisper meant for you alone. And of all notifications that punctuate your digital day, this is the one that feels the human.

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