What you named can effectively kill 8h, every effin' day.
Personally, what I don't get is folks wearing smart watches, getting instant notifications when somebody pings them. Its apparently not enough that phone blinks and plays sounds and your desk vibrates, now your wrist has to. How desperately addicted to constant stream of stimuli they are, my boss including (and he still thinks his apple watch are great, but when I sit next to him I see how it fucks him pretty badly, plus its so annoying I want to throw him out through closed window myself and I am not alone).
People still somehow do their job, despite of these semi-useless gizmos, not thanks to them. Yes you can tune it down but for every person doing so there are 10, or more like 100 who don't do it at all. And not only for the case of my boss, it makes them objectively worse workers, employees, friends, parents and overall human beings.
I ran a small side business for a while - at the time I had a fitness tracker style watch that would vibrate every time I got an email or notification. At first it was thrilling but after a while as the workload got too much I realised every time it vibrated my heart rate would increase and my anxiety would spike. It felt like I was on 24/7 on-call.
Now I don't receive any notifications. I check my messages too often still, but at least it's on my terms.
I still wear a fitness tracker but now it's just a watch.
> Personally, what I don't get is folks wearing smart watches, getting instant notifications when somebody pings them.
My watch is my primary defense against interruptions. With the watch, I can leave the ringer and vibrator off on my phone entirely. When an alert happens, my watch vibrates once and that's it. It's an intrusion that's easy to ignore when I don't want to be interrupted.
I'm in the same boat. I select which apps send notifications to my watch and that prevents me from using my phone unnecessarily. Looking at my wrist is a lot easier than taking the phone out of my pocket and unlocking it. And I'm much less likely to get distracted by something unrelated.
My watch tells me when I have a meeting in 10min, if I get a call and if a family member messages. That's it. If I need to take medication I'll set an alarm as well but that's still infrequent. Only things I know I have to take action on right away.
Personally, what I don't get is folks wearing smart watches, getting instant notifications when somebody pings them. Its apparently not enough that phone blinks and plays sounds and your desk vibrates, now your wrist has to. How desperately addicted to constant stream of stimuli they are, my boss including (and he still thinks his apple watch are great, but when I sit next to him I see how it fucks him pretty badly, plus its so annoying I want to throw him out through closed window myself and I am not alone).
People still somehow do their job, despite of these semi-useless gizmos, not thanks to them. Yes you can tune it down but for every person doing so there are 10, or more like 100 who don't do it at all. And not only for the case of my boss, it makes them objectively worse workers, employees, friends, parents and overall human beings.