2021/9/26 I almost can't believe I'm doing this. Every day, I write, and every day, I feel no more accomplished than the day before. I could write useful or interesting things. Some days I do, and on those days I do feel accomplished. Many days I just do the minimum and say I've completed my goal but don't have time or don't have energy to outdo it. But today, today I will construct a poem.
That little notification, only on the screen for three seconds, and only taking half a second for me to notice and process it. Yet that minute moment has turned into a half hour, then an hour, then more as I follow up with where that little notification took me. I realize I was in the middle of something when I got the notification and I get back to it, with an “Oh yeah, oops, forgot I was doing that.” This is rare for me since I usually have few notifications set to alert me and fewer still that would be of interest or require my attention to divert. As I understand that is not the case for many people who use multiple internet connected devices each day. There is an epidemic of notification induced distraction. It even kills people, mostly in relation to motor vehicles but there are industrial accidents and other rare types of notification precipitated demise as well. Should one have the discipline to remember to follow up with each of ones items of correspondence, work, or personal business at an appropriate time then notifications would be entirely unnecessary. The notifications make things easier by automating the memory process but they often do this at inappropriate times and well more often for inappropriate purposes. We have more control now than a few years ago but things are still not ideal. Perhaps the ideal would be a legally enforced urgency level system. Savvy users would turn off all notifications with anything less than top level urgency with the assurance that no abuse of that label would be made.
Well, so much for a poem :)