*ping* *ding* *email sound* *instant message sound*. Is your life overrun by push notifications? In this episode of The People Purpose Podcast, Chas and Julie discuss the stresses an overwhelming amount of notifications can cause. Plus, find out how many push notifications two billion smart phone users are receiving. The large number may surprise you!
*ping* *ding* *email sound* *instant message sound*. Is your life overrun by push notifications? In this episode of The People Purpose Podcast, Chas and Julie discuss the stresses an overwhelming amount of notifications can cause. Plus, find out how many push notifications two billion smart phone users are receiving. The large number may surprise you!
Well, welcome to the people purpose podcast, the show that explores all of the ins and outs, challenges and opportunities, HR, people, managers. Oh people face at work every day. I am one of your co hosts, Chas Fields and I am with my other homebody colleague, at least for this episode. I don't
Julie Develin:know at home is anywhere I lay my head. Really, Develin? No. I am. Yeah, no, I am home. It's nice to be home. I went grocery shopping the other day. That was odd. Yeah.
Chas Fields:Did you go to the store? Yeah, actually, yeah. Well,
Julie Develin:I my flight landed at like 1030 at night and there was only one was done. Well, there's only one store that was open. So I went and it was happened to me the most expensive store that I have near me. But I went because I had to I literally had no food like none. And you know, trying to eat healthy Chas.
Chas Fields:I know. I'm really proud of you. By the way. Thank you had to
Julie Develin:make sure that I went and I got the got to and I did. And you know, that's not why we're here.
Chas Fields:Where she goes with this. She got to close it. Wrap it up. Jules wrap.
Julie Develin:Something good. I had good food.
Chas Fields:Yeah, there you go. I love it. So let's do this. Julie, as we do and we start every episode with tell me something good. Hey, Jules, tell me something good.
Julie Develin:I just did. I had good food, the fact that I mean, well, but I have something else. So you know, we were talking prior to this recording about how awesome it is to clean. And I know that's weird. That sounds weird. But we were discussing how much like satisfaction we can get from that and how it can really helped us mentally when you take some time out of what might be a busy weekend to just Declutter. And I did that. And I feel really good. It's so
Chas Fields:funny, because that was going to be my something good as well. In fact, we had our entire broader team meeting and everyone on our team did some sort of very odd number cleaning this weekend. And my response to it was it's just too hot in Texas right now. Like it was 115 yesterday. So you're either in the water, right? Like, by the way in Texas, you don't know this, Julie, but every typical neighborhood right? has at least in the burbs has a community pool, you can still own your personal pool, like if you want one, we do not have one but we have a community pool that we always go to. And I'll be honest like it, it's bathwater. You know what I mean? It's just bathwater. So is it refreshing? Maybe for a brief moment, but you know, so you just want to be endorsed when it's 115. Outside. Yeah, I
Julie Develin:had the same experience this past a few days ago, I was in Florida and i i Actually it was too hot to run. So I did my workout in the pool. But I was too hot in the pool. Like I was sweating in the
Chas Fields:worse. Oh, it was yes.
Julie Develin:Let's listen. I would much rather it be warm than cold. But there to a certain point of heat where it's like too much
Chas Fields:even be outside. Hey, Julie, you choose to live in the Northeast. I just want you to know that.
Julie Develin:I do. I do. Thank you for thank you for
Chas Fields:reminding me about what are we here today?
Julie Develin:I'm not really sure Chas? If we're talking existential, why are we here? You know, that kind of thing. We're here because we have a podcast but no. So we're here today to talk. Well, we're here to talk about communications. But we we want to frame it a little bit differently. Communication is so broad. But what we're talking about today is the amount of notifications and the multiple flat platforms that we all use, and how do we juggle all of these ways of communicating? How do we prioritize them? And Chas, do you want to talk a little bit about how this episode came about?
Chas Fields:Yeah, so we have to give a shout out to our dear friend Jenny. So Jenny runs our social team, or is a part of our social media team. She's incredible. We love her to death. In fact, every time we get on what seemingly is to be a 15 minute phone call, we laughed for 45 minutes last week, right? So that was really fun. And she she sent us this reel that was on Instagram, and was like, I have an idea. Like, of course, we love Jenny's ideas. They're great. And she sends it in. She's like, do you think you could do an episode around this specific topic? So what we did was, I was like, Julie, we were on the phone together when she sent it. And I was like, let's just add her to the conversation. Let's figure out what our idea is. And hopefully bring it to life. And I think you said at best you we we have so many notifications. I'm through all of the time, which is a perfect segue into our business data the day. So for our listeners today, communication, but I want you to think bigger picture, I want you to think about all of the things from push notifications and everything that you receive, that you deal with on a regular basis. And I promise you, we'll get to business application, but first, the business side of the day. So we all know the pesky notifications. All right, that you get from your apps behind that app typically is a platform. Specifically push notifications is a platform. That is where your phone sources, those messages being received. All right. One of the platforms airship which is where we got this stack airship that enables the push notifications to get to your phone. They own a large portion of the notification space, Julie, I guess is the best way to describe it.
Julie Develin:This is an industry that you may or may not know. Yeah,
Unknown:it's deep into some events. Push notification industry. Is that fair?
Chas Fields:Yeah. And there are several of them. And the business stat of the day is in 2021. All right, so we're talking two years ago, Julian and 2021 2 billion plus smartphone users, okay. It's a lot of smartphones, a lot of people, 2 billion smartphone users had received over 600 billion push notifications. Yeah.
Julie Develin:So So here's the thing. That for those of you who are listening, you may see you may say, Oh, I'm I've probably personally received a billion myself, right. First of all, when we hear a number like 6 billion, 600 billion million, whatever, that's too much for our brain to comprehend. Just know that this is a massive, massive number. And push notifications and notifications in general, have become inner intermingled into our lives. And it's become for many of us really, really overwhelming. Because there's too much information, too much data that we are taking in. And what that's doing to us. It's it's making us it's making us struggle with things like decision making. It's making us struggle with things like working at all. I think about it, Chas, if you are I mean, you were you were watch that gives you notifications, I actually stopped doing that because I was too distracted. And like it was it was like recognizing that about myself. I was getting rid of patient every couple of minutes. It it completely takes away your focus from whatever it is that you're doing.
Chas Fields:I love the term overwhelming, right. And when we originally planned this episode, and we were doing it on the fly it I got to the point of is there such thing in today's society as fully disconnecting? And and here's the deal, it's not just like it's yeah, like lifework balance or work life balance, whichever one of those camps you believe in, or all of the things that people like, whoa, you know, when you go on PTO, your work is going to be redistributed. So when you get back, you have nothing to worry about, which we all know is pretty far fetched. You know? So you think about is there such thing as fully disconnecting? Let's say you're not working at all, let's say let's say you're not working at all, is there such thing as like, can I separate myself from the push notification from the data that you're taking in? To simply just disconnect? And I don't think they're I don't think there is I don't
Julie Develin:And again, if you're if you're someone who's listening to this episode, saying, Oh, I can disconnect. Please tell us your secrets. I would say you know, if we're talking on a macro level here, the average person I would say there's probably not a way to truly disconnect because yes, consider going on PTO. Let's say you're out of the office. As you have you're out of the office message on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Have you turned off and you intentionally turned off all of the work notifications that you get on a daily basis? And, and, you know, doesn't give you more anxiety to not get those notification?
Chas Fields:Go give it away. Don't give it away. We got to get there. Go ahead. Oh, sorry.
Julie Develin:You know, I guess, I guess, you know, maybe maybe what we should start with Chas is, you know, we have there are so many different types of notifications. You know, it's not just the push notifications. It's the texts. It's the emails, it's the project management tools. It's, you know, the messenger platforms, it's social media interactions, it's comments on social media. And by the way, if you have five or six different social media accounts, it's some of them you have notifications enabled, some of them you don't have Chas. I get notifications for certain apps that I didn't even realize I opted into the notifications, like, Oh, hey, what's up, you should follow XY and Z. I'm like, why are you telling y on a random Tuesday? Why are you telling me this?
Chas Fields:Uh, you know, it's funny, because I think the purpose of today's conversation is how do we prioritize it now? So So you and I believe that it's really hard to disconnect. Right? So I just took a vacation not too long ago. And I was really, really passionate and adamant on doing my absolute best Lindsay and I celebrated our 10 year. And I was really adamant about being intentional with the time that we had together, you know, Kid free in the middle of the ocean, right like that. That was really important to me.
Julie Develin:Clear, they weren't stuck in the middle of the ocean, like a floating on a raft?
Chas Fields:Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. Anyways, the point, the point of this was okay, I knew I had a couple of time sensitive things that I had to take care of when I was on vacation, right? I knew it was going to fall that way. And I was like, Okay, I am going to stick to my, you know, stick to myself here stick to the promise that I made to myself that I won't do anything beyond that. Right. And I did. And I did. I want to talk about the anxiety piece here in a little bit. But I think getting to the point of how do we go about prioritizing and being able to do this in a healthy way that not only is what's best for you, but the business also has to recognize that that's best for you. There are ways that we can do this. So Julie, maybe you talk about understanding the why before we go even deeper, go ahead.
Julie Develin:Yeah, so you know, what is the why I think, you know, depending on the type of phone that you have, you know, are we except when we're sometimes depending on type of phone, yeah, sometimes these push notifications, these notifications are automatically enabled. Sometimes there's nothing that you sometimes you have to be so intentional about going in and turning these things off. That, you know, you have to make sure that you take time out of your life to do it. And the question is, do we really do that? I know, I generally don't. Again, you know, there are certain phones that you have to accept these push notifications that you have to opt in to certain things right. So here's the thing for those notifications that we are choosing to accept. Ask yourself, what is the why behind accepting that notifications? Right now, obviously, if it's if it's work, etc. And there's a there's a real true business reason as to why you should be notified of whatever, you know, immediately. That's another story. But some of these things, you know, do we really need to have the notifications enabled? You know, does it help us?
Chas Fields:You know, good. Yeah. Does it actually help you?
Julie Develin:Right, what does it? Does it help us? Or does it distract us? Is it helpful or distracting? That's the question that you have to I think, ask yourself when you are opting or not to accept a notification from whatever work app and that's, you know, that's what we're talking about. But let's let's go with a little farther from any app from any app. Because we're talking about work, but because from a mental health perspective, from a mental health perspective, right, I mean, this really has a an impact. Sure. Yeah.
Chas Fields:There's, there's I like the approach of not not does it help us? And yes, there are a lot of studies out there that talked about social media and the impact it's currently having on you know, our younger generation, right? You've seen it you've seen the memes and you know, you you don't want your kid to become a cyborg or whatever it is, we limit, you know, our, our son's amount of time on technology. He's also going to grow up in the realm of technology even more than what we know. Right? ate. Like, that's, that's what the delicate balance is. But I love the approach that you took there because it's Do we understand the purpose of why we're accepting the notification? Right? And not only that, does it actually help? Right? So it's really important to recognize, you know, organizations sometimes have the expectation that if you have a smartphone, or smartphone allowance, you're required to have those notifications. How do you? Where do you draw the line? Like, how do you hold? How does the company hold the employee accountable? And how does the employee hold themselves accountable to be like, Okay, it's midnight. My job doesn't require me to work 24/7 I'll share a story about that in a minute. But how, how do we mitigate losing a good employee on the verge of burnout or impacting their mental health when we're constantly requiring them? Hey, you've got to have your notifications on
Julie Develin:I don't I don't know the answer to that. But I will go back to the the mental health piece and just give another sort of personal example here, you know, those who've listened to our podcast know that I'm a big Phillies fan. I don't miss that Phillies game. I love the Phillies. The Phillies are, you know, I?
Chas Fields:Okay, can I can I just tell on you for a second? Because there have been several times Alright, so first off, yes, she loves the Phillies avid baseball fan. This is why Julian I get along, even though she routes with the Phillies for a multitude of reasons. But there are times that we may be in a room together or something. And you know, at one moment, we're together, right? And we're having a conversation, or we're chatting with customers or doing whatever, and then all of a sudden, I look over and I see Julie, sitting at a table by herself. And she's looking down on her phone, okay, okay, you know, maybe she's working, maybe she's doing something, and I come over. And depending on where we are, because we know there's a blackout schedule with television, depending where we are. She's not watching the game, because it's blacked out. She's watching the notification highlights from the MLB app. And it's doing like it's like, almost, it's not listening to the radio, but it's doing the line by line pitch by pitch and keeping up with that. She loves baseball, like,
Julie Develin:I'm passionate about it. But here's the thing, it affects my mental health. It's an added stressor, especially when the Phillies are losing, which by the way, they've lost past two days. So, you know, we do are we truly aware of what these notifications that we're getting are doing to our psyche? And the answer, I think is no, because it's not something we think about often.
Chas Fields:Especially in your passions, right? Like you think about how passionate you are with baseball or passionate with your work or passionate with people like whatever it is. Sometimes those notifications are going to bring you down when it's unnecessary notification for you to receive, right like I genuinely, I genuinely believe that neither of us could give up watching baseball, right? Like we just couldn't. It would be really, really, really difficult for us to but on the flip side, how do you how is your mental health impacted when the Phillies are on a win streak or they're on their way to the World Series? Or you know what I mean? Like,
Julie Develin:which by the way they were last year?
Chas Fields:Sorry, the softball. Softball? Yeah,
Julie Develin:yeah, no, but but we can take that and relate it to work. And say when you get a negative work message, or when you get someone who, you know, we all know that there are people who message us and we get a notification. And we're like, oh, no, what did they want? Like Chas? Every time? You know, I'm just kidding. Not you not you know, of course not you. But you know that they're, oh, gosh, what did they want? Right? Yeah, immediately does something to our mood. So again, you know, it's about it's about this intentionality thing. I think it's also about managing expectations.
Chas Fields:Yeah, I do. I do. So we talked about push notifications, let's go a little bit more in depth with the work conversation because there's like, there's chat and there's email, right? So whatever chat platform you use, or whatever email platform you use, like you're, you're gonna relate here, because what makes it difficult is when you receive a chat notification, I'm gonna ask you this question. Alright. Julie, if I send you an email, what what's typical response time? Like what is the the stereotypical global acceptance rule for an email response? 24 hours 24 business? Wow.
Julie Develin:Well, we say it's 24 hours. Okay? We live that live that but here's the other thing. You're a bad example, because you will just text me. Very rarely we email each other.
Chas Fields:Yeah, it's overrated for you.
Julie Develin:But that's, that's a whole other conversation about the type of relationship that you have with the caller. EEG, it's fair, and the amount of time that they expect you to reply in. Because if I text you, no matter when I touched
Chas Fields:you, you're getting a response back.
Julie Develin:Generally, and yeah, generally, you know, depending on what the question is, yeah.
Chas Fields:Or I, you know, but I'll be frank, like for you and I, if we're, we don't have the capacity at that moment. Hey, I'll get back to you with this later. And we don't take offense to it. But stick with me on this. So like, email, general rule? 24 hours, right? General rule those 24 hours? What if somebody messages you, in your team's chat? Do you feel more obligated to respond quickly? And your person your team's jet? 100%? The question becomes, why is that? Why does email versus chat and I get it, right. But you think about it. 1015 20 years ago, however, long before the first original chat, whatever was designed, you only had email, and then later chat rooms and chat, and you know, the messengers, and all of that came, so you really had to wait until somebody responded to an email. Now, if somebody pings you on a chat, it's like, I got to get back to him quickly.
Julie Develin:Right, because chat is an instantaneous thing. So how is it? And I'm guilty of this, I also think that it's selfish using chat is selfish, because you're saying to that group, we're saying to that person, my message is important for you to take your attention away. And I need my question answered.
Chas Fields:That is very bold. I think about it from college. All right, I think about it in college. So like the rule was, or the I don't know, the the accepted rule was, if you had a doctorate, you had to wait 15 minutes after the start of class before if that professor didn't show you how to 15 minute rule, right? So something could have happened, maybe didn't get a chance to email the class to say, Hey, I'm not coming. But if the professor had a doctorate, you waited 15 minutes in the class sitting twiddling your thumbs doing whatever you have to do. If it was a non doctorate, an adjunct professor, it was 10 minutes. Okay. So the the point that I'm trying to make here is, when it comes to the email, it's like, okay, yeah, we're just going to email him because it's not as important or at least that's what our subconscious tells us. But I would I would argue that what's in my if it if it's not my email, it doesn't exist. Right, like chat to me is so in the moment that I will, I am more likely to forget about the chat and the conversation that I have in chat versus if I'm in an email, I read the email, and then I have to respond versus something quick hit in chat.
Julie Develin:I think it's interesting. Do we train our employees as to when to use each platform? We don't?
Chas Fields:I don't know that I've ever seen it.
Julie Develin:I don't know that I've been trained on it. I know that there's I'm sure there is a some kind of universal training on you know, when should you use chat teams or slack or whatever? communication tool versus when should you use email?
Chas Fields:Listen, it's it's 2023. And people don't know about the Reply All button and the appropriate time to use a Reply All button and not Yeah, and not so. So, you know, I think all of this boils down to we have to set a healthy boundary where we can, right, I get it like sometimes you have to focus to get the job done. Like Jenny gave us a great example where her you know, one of her peers colleagues is like, hey, if anything is an absolute necessity, text me because I'm turning off my teams in my email, so I can focus on actually doing my job. Right? I was I used to work a job that I was on call 24/7. Right. And there was a 40 hour workweek. I've said this on a podcast before a 40 hour work day, if you will, a time that I did not sleep for 40 hours, boy that was unsafe. But I I also recognized like, I didn't have to be that person. And I just went back and said, Hey, I'm on our 36 I really should probably sleep because I'm delirious. Right? So I think also a lot of this, especially with not just the way we are delivered notifications. But we also have the internal thing going back to the healthy boundary that we don't want to let someone down. Right, right.
Julie Develin:And the way that we're delivered notifications, remember, this is not just on your phone, you can have notifications enabled on your desktop, on your on your iPad, or you know I mean there's there's a million different places that we can check all the smartphones or I'm sorry, smart home stuff. We're getting notifications from that stuff now too. Right? I mean, we're just we're just constantly be, we've become so so in, in tune with needing to be aware immediately. Yeah, you know, I mean, I hyper awareness
Chas Fields:almost leads us to not being able to function to some degree. Does that make sense? What it does
Julie Develin:is for people at work is it takes focus away. And we are in this constant balance of where are we going to expend our energy now, right? We all have so many different things that we're doing on our daily in our daily lives. It's about prioritization, what are we going to prioritize? And if I get if I get a notification from my fitness app, right? I'm gonna I'm in the middle of doing a work project, I get this notification that says, hey, you haven't closed, you're moving today? You know, my mind goes away from the work project, and it goes to I better work out. Right. Right. So just taking it's understanding and having the self discipline to know where to prioritize. And I think that that's very difficult for
Chas Fields:folks. Yeah, I know, we're getting close on time here. I think where we have to, and I love that you brought up the training thing, like have we been trained on? Or should we at least be having the conversation that you and I are having, not just in PTO, but like, at the end of a workday or vacate whatever it is, if you are, when it comes to monetary, like let's say I go on vacation, I am spending my hard earned money from the organization to go do something for me, my family, whoever I'm with, right, whoever I'm with on my vacation, I should be able to disconnect because that money that is put into my pocket is also money that I helped the organization generate from a revenue perspective. Right? So it's backwards, I think, in society, not here at UKG. I think we do a phenomenal job of of letting people disconnect here, I really, really do. There are organizations that I've worked with, and then I just listened to the environment. And I'm like, Man, you are chasing down something that you're going to run yourself into the ground. And then I look at like the notification as well. What's your schedule like today? Well, I'm quadruple booked on six hours of my day. And I'm thinking man, you know, are Is there a level of addiction, when it comes to notifications and being in the know are working to that degree where our organization if we're trying to promote a specific culture or do something different? Maybe we should be having this conversation, right?
Julie Develin:If there's a takeaway here, something for organizations to consider, it's taking a look at the mental health resources that you're providing to your employees, but also recognizing that mental health goes beyond action, right? It goes beyond addiction to drugs or alcohol. There's a real thing, a smartphone addiction and internet addiction, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that it's it's really, it's almost like an epidemic. And you can see it, and it's been, it's been sort of invading our society, as the years have rolled on. And I think there are so many positives to getting notifications and getting and being informed. But we have to recognize the whys. And this is where I found my purpose, by the way. Yeah, we have to recognize the whys behind the opt ins. Yeah. So I am opting in to be notified every time I get a team's message. I'm actually based on this episode rethinking that.
Chas Fields:Because Thanks, Jenny. I will, I will, I will get
Julie Develin:I will get notifications seven days a week, which Yeah, you know, but then again, it goes to the anxiety thing, if I if I'm not informed, then I'm anxious about it. So that's a double edged sword. Yeah, definitely.
Chas Fields:And I'm not saying this is you. But I think when it comes to addiction, or being so inundated to the point that you are addicted to those notifications, you know, we look at addiction, sometimes it's like substance abuse or other things. If the work is putting the pressure on you, we have to we have two extremes. There are jobs that you legitimately don't have the inability to shut it off, right? Maybe the tangible piece and this is kind of what I found my purpose in is setting a timer for specific times when you check the application, right? Like there is now a industry not an industry, but there are now people who build for children, these devices that you set a timer, you lock your phone in there, your tablet, whatever, and then it locks it. And then when that timer is up, then you can go back in and check it and that's just right. So like this is the world that we've come to, right. This is the world that we've come to and then gradually developed maybe some self discipline to do it last but I really liked the timer idea because it's okay I'm going to focus on this task for the next 45 minutes or however long to do my job and do it well. Right and focus on those things. And it's little increment steps. So there are a lot of tools out there that can help you but really, like I like your purpose, Julie, I think I'm someone in the same boat.
Julie Develin:Yeah, I feel like we could do maybe even a follow up to this just talking about the tools time management tools and everything. So a few reminders before we leave don't forget to LIKE subscribe, use the hashtag people repurposed it people purpose pods social media sites. Be sure to check out the latest blogs or research from the workforce Institute at UKG by visiting workforce institute.org. And, yeah, turn on notifications to get our podcasts when they dropped.
Chas Fields:No
Julie Develin:I'm just kidding. It's been real.
Chas Fields:Thanks for listening. And yeah, Cheers. Bye