Ever since I’ve had a cell phone or other portable means of communication I’ve been constantly connected. I remember trying out the beta version of Yahoo Messenger that allowed you to ‘Go Mobile’ that is to get your messages in the form of text messages to your phone. I ended up switching all my IM accounts to that. So, last year when I bought my blackberry I hooked it up to ALL of my email accounts (about 7). I actually received email from each of these email addresses on a pretty regular basis. And because the spam filter on my hosting provider sucks (that’s another blog for another day), I was forced to turn off the filter. After about 3 months of the constant assault of emails pouring through onto my phone I decided to turn the tone and vibrate for a few of the accounts. A few horrible mailing lists later I ended up with pretty disgusting emails coming into my phone. So, as of yesterday, I cut off forwarding to my phone for all but 3 accounts (1 of them being my blackberry’s native email addy). I turned off my mobile IM accounts around the same time.
About 2 weeks ago I turned off mobile updates from Twitter. That has significantly reduced the amount of traffic to my phone. I really do enjoy my twitter account, and all the people that I follow, but it becomes overwhelming, and I spend a good majority of my time in front of my computer, where I check twitter periodically.
I also modified my Facebook account to only send notifications when someone writes on my wall, sends me a message, requests me as a friend, comments after me on an item, or comments on one of my items.
What have I noticed since then. It’s quiet. And I’m not constantly bothered by the blinking red LED on the phone telling me that I have a new message waiting. I’m able to concentrate on whatever I’m randomly working on.
This is a good solution for me. I work in the world and industry of being constantly connected, but sometimes it is very nice to just put the phone down and not look at it for a while. It’s also nice to be able to go to a movie and not have 20+ messages waiting for me when its over.
So for those of you that want to get ahold of me, you have my phone number, send me a text or just call and use your voice.
–dez