On by default

Lots of things in life come with defaults — the tip amounts suggested at checkout, your employer’s benefits package, the school your kids attend.

They’re easy to accept. But they were designed for other people’s preferences, not yours.

Consider our phones.

The defaults organize our phones around a particular assumption: that we want to be engaged constantly. A banner notification, or a loud chime, or a little red badge counting unread messages.

It’s a reasonable assumption. Just not for me. I found myself responding to the phone more than using it.

One popular fix is to disengage entirely. No notifications, nothing that might interrupt. The phone becomes a dumb tool.

But turning everything off, while more considered, is still someone else’s answer.

Instead, I curated. Removed apps, deleted social media, pared the dock to the apps I use most. Turned off most notifications and badges.

I kept a few notifications that were doing something. Calendar alerts prompt me to switch contexts — which why things are on the calendar. Texts from certain people are worth interrupting for. They were defaults before. Now they’re choices.