Welcome to Doug’s Newsletter. Every Thursday, I share one tip for reclaiming the freedom of your time.

Today’s Setlist

🎩 One Tip → Do Not Disturb Mode

😄 Funny Business → They yearn

📊 Community Poll → Why are our feet so far away?

🎩 One Tip: Do Not Disturb Mode

You’re in the zone.

After what felt like never-ending distractions and suddenly becoming the most needed person in the universe, you’ve found some alone time to do that thing you’ve been looking forward to all day.

And then your phone rings.

Annoying, but probably important. Until you see…

And POOF! You are no longer in the zone. You are very out of the zone.

Fortunately, moments like this don’t need to happen in your life. Enter: Do Not Disturb mode.

Turning on Do Not Disturb helps make your phone work for you — not the other way around.

I mentioned in a previous post that I only allow two apps to send me push notifications. Do Not Disturb is what enables me to be selective about what I allow to invade my space seeking my attention.

The average person receives 46 push notifications per day — almost one every 20 minutes they’re awake. The reason I get ~7 per day between my two apps is something easy for you to do, too:

Shift from a full access mindset, where the question is “Which disturbances do I want to eliminate?” to a no access mindset, where the question becomes “Which notifications do I want to allow?”

Shift from Disturb mode to Do Not Disturb Mode.

♟️Your Turn: Enable Do Not Disturb Mode (DnD)

Android instructions from Google

iPhone instructions

Access: Open Control Center on your iPhone by swiping down from the top-right corner. Tap on 'Focus' or ‘Do Not Disturb’ to activate.

Customize: Open the 'Settings' app on your iPhone. Scroll down and tap on 'Focus', then tap on ‘Do Not Disturb’.

From here, I’ll highlight 2 great options to customize what you want to let through: People & Apps. The first is ‘People’:

People: Select specific people whom you want to be excluded from your DnD. When they reach out, it’ll be as if you don’t have DnD turned on. But for everyone else, you do! You can also choose to ‘Allow Calls From’ only your favorites or contacts if you’re worried about missing calls. Lastly, you can see I turned on ‘Allow Repeated Calls’, meaning anyone can break through my DnD if they call twice within 3 minutes. This has eliminated spam calls for me while making sure I’m reachable if someone really needs to reach me.

Apps: Choose specific apps that you want to be excluded from your DnD. When they reach out, it’ll be as if you don’t have DnD turned on. But for every other app, you do!

Hopefully, this walkthrough is helpful — I am still getting the hang of creating intro walkthroughs with accompanying screenshots. Where did you get tripped up? What apps are worthy of push notifications? Reach out and let me know!

😄 Funny Business

📊 Community Poll

Results for last week’s question: How often do you wash your sheets?

This checks out; weekly or bi-weekly feels right to me. Now if someone could invent a way to fold a fitted sheet, we’d really be cooking…

On to this week’s question!

Note: I’m traveling in Peru this week, so I’ll be sharing the results in 2 weeks. No question next week.

How I Can Help

Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways for us to work together:

1. Grab time with me for a 1:1 session on community, consumer-driven research, or anything else.

2. Join me at a 4-hour retreat.

When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…