In the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system there's this concept of an inbox. People often think of their inbox as just their email, but in GTD an inbox is anything where you collect things that need to be processed. If you're not careful you'll quickly end up with too many of them.
When I look at my phone and laptop I can identify at least 14 inboxes, ranging from email and calendar, to messaging apps and social media.
This is becoming an issue, especially with life and work becoming ever more complex. Every one of these inboxes have to be checked regularly or send a notification by themselves, and every one of them can contain tasks or information that I need to act on or process.
The sheer amount of information and tasks that pile up in any of these inboxes is a constant source of distraction and stress. And of course it's also definitly a me problem; I have a severe case of FOMO where I sometimes even end up going through a bunch of these apps in rapid succession to see if anything new popped up.
It's clear that I need a reset.
First off, I need to consolidate my inboxes. I really don't need three separate messaging apps, I also don't need to have both LinkedIn and Instagram installed on my phone. A concrete example are the messaging apps – I have Messages, WhatsApp and Signal installed at the moment. It's difficult to get everyone on Signal so I'll try to consolidate as much of my messaging to WhatsApp. I know it's a Meta product, but sometimes you have to make compromises. Once more people and groups move over to Signal I'll be in a place to reconsider this.
The second thing I need to do is to set specific times for checking my inboxes. I'll simply put this on my calendar, and I'll see how this goes. I'll start with three times a day (morning, lunch, evening) and see if I can later on reduce this to two times a day.
Lastly I need to be way more mindful of my information intake. It's easy to have a pinned tab for Mastodon and IRC open at all times. All they are doing is distract me from work, costing me a bunch of time I could spend on other things like spending time with my family, running or reading a book.