Eliminate Distractions With a Custom Do Not Disturb Response
Fun fact: you don’t need to be behind the wheel to use the Do Not Disturb While Driving feature on your smartphone. You can activate it when you want to opt out of the device, and you can set up an answering machine to tell people why you are unavailable and when you will answer their messages or calls.
Think of it as an out of office email, but for your phone.
Behavioral design expert Nir Eyal explains this trick in her new book, Ineffability: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life . It offers the following custom message:
Hey! This is an automatic answer to let you know that I cannot be distracted at the moment. I won’t see your message right away, but I’ll get back to you soon.
(I am not receiving notification. If urgent, please reply urgent to send the notification along with the original message.)
If you are using an iPhone, people can still contact you in an emergency — they can answer “urgently” as above, or they can call your phone twice in a row.
I was looking for this kind of jailbreak because my current method of staying “inevitable” while working was to keep my phone silent and turn it face down – but then I worry that I might miss an emergency call from my phone. parents living nearby.
I could set my phone to Do Not Disturb on a permanent basis, which would still allow me to receive two consecutive calls from my family, but I love the idea of creating a personalized message that can be customized for different situations. (“I’m at work,” “I’m on vacation,” “I have a day without my phone,” etc.) I belong to the generation that grew up with the AIM message, so I was already thinking how I could have a little fun with this …
Is it also like installing one of those, as they used to be called? – answering machines. A socially acceptable way to let people know that you can’t reply to them right now, but check your messages later.
If you would like to know how to activate and update the Do Not Disturb While Driving answering machine on your phone, we have a step-by-step guide:
And yes, I am adding “Set up custom Do Not Disturb While Driving” message to my to-do list for this afternoon.
And you?