Push Notifications

by | Apr 20, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro

A few weeks ago, a client forwarded me a very cool newsletter from the Washington Post. It’s called “A Better Week”—a self-described “7-day email course that will help you conquer your calendar, get more done, and find time for the things you care about.”

I loved this series—for two reasons. Perhaps most obviously, I’m a sucker for anything time/life/work management related. I read productivity hacks—a lot. And I swear by the magic of a well-organized calendar. So the topic was right in my wheelhouse. 

Second, it sparked so many thoughts about how to do newsletters creatively—differently—and provide true value to an audience. Over the course of seven days, I received daily emails about things like friendship and TV shows and even cleaning the house. They were short. They were valuable. And they ended on day seven. 

Exactly what was promised. Exactly what I wanted. 

If you’re in the newsletter game, I’d love to talk more about how you could replicate this strategy (For real, email me. Let’s chat.) And maybe I’ll make unusual newsletters the topic of a future +Good Intro. But that’s not why we’re here today.

We’re here today to talk about the first email I received from A Better Week. An email that rang so true that I immediately put it into practice. 

We’re here to talk about push notifications. 

In 2019, researchers from Asurion noted that Americans check their phones 96 times a day, on average. By 2022, that number had quadrupled to 352. 

A huge culprit for why we continually pick up our phones (or click to different windows on our laptops, or bounce around apps incessantly) is because of the little alerts that call to us from the ether. Like Thomas Johnson, author of A Better Week, we have a serious distraction problem that is fueled by the popups that serve as our very own Pavlov’s bell. We’re salivating over the next email, Slack message, or Instagram story. We’re inviting interruption by allowing everything to be urgent. 

Spoiler: when everything is urgent, nothing is. 

This is true for things like social media and random apps, but it’s also true when it comes to work. The push notifications make everything seem immediate, when in reality, very little is. 

It’s like this recent post from Adam Grant…

Our email inbox should be a repository that we get to when we get to. We should control our calendars (yay timeboxing!) and choose when we read chats and updates. We are marketers, not first responders, so emergency shouldn’t be in our vocabulary. 

So, what do we do? How do we react to the tyranny of the urgent; the overwhelm of all the pings? We fight back. We decide that communication, done right, should be a pull, not a push. 

And here are a few ways I’ve been experimenting with doing just that:

  1. Turn off social media notifications. While I love a good meme as much as anyone, I can happily scroll them at the end of the day instead of being interrupted.
  2. Turn off inbox notifications on my phone and computer. One of the best things I ever did early in my career was to turn off inbox notifications on my phone. My team always had my phone number, and I told them that if there was something I MUST look at immediately, please call me. Want to know how many phone calls I’ve received so far? One. In well over a decade.

    On my computer, I treat my inbox like my physical mailbox—a receiver for materials that I get to when it’s convenient for me. I check it every day, but not much more than that.
  3. Only tag the relevant parties. A couple of weeks ago, we ran into a big challenge here at S+G. Our Basecamp was out of control with notifications—so much so that we couldn’t get through them. The solution? Batching feedback, saving DMs for things that really deserve priority attention, and only tagging the people who need to be in the conversation. We all know the pain of a reply all that’s gone out of control…and your project management system is no different. Include the people who need to be included; save everyone else the notifications!
  4. Batch notifications. Set a time to check email. Carve out a 15-minute block to read through all of your pings. Decide to pull your notifications when you are ready for them instead of letting them push at you when they are ready. You are in the driver’s seat and you get to decide. (I literally have “check notifications” on my calendar and “read emails” on my to-do list.)
  5. Put your phone away. This morning, I was talking with Lindsey about this very topic and she mentioned that yesterday, as she was writing, she put her phone in the other room. She said her productivity skyrocketed. Simply having your phone nearby makes you want to reach for it (hello, dopamine hits!), so fight the temptation by putting it somewhere else! (I haven’t mastered this one yet, but it’s aspirational!)

What else would you add? How are you pushing against urgency culture? How are you fighting the push and choosing the pull? We’d love to learn from you, let us know in the comments!

Working Asynchronously in the Nonprofit Community

Working Asynchronously in the Nonprofit Community

by | Apr 14, 2022 | +Good Newsletter, Work Smarter

Here at Swell+Good, we talk a lot about work processes. How do we make our team more efficient? How do we improve quality? How can we better serve our clients? And, most importantly, how do we make sure that everyone on our team actually gets to enjoy their life? 

Yes, we love marketing. And yes, we love helping organizations raise more support so that they can better do the work they were born to do. That’s our what, and we’re kind of obsessed with it. 

But if we’re honest, we give equal attention to our how—to the way we do the work, not just the work itself. We’re very, very into work culture. We’re very, very into people being humans first and employees second. And we’re very, very into work being fun and not-terrible. 

We were virtual and remote long before being virtual and remote was cool, so we’ve had lots of time to get creative on how we connect and communicate—and ultimately we feel pretty proud of where we’ve landed. 

Our tricks aren’t magic, but they are intentional. And over the next few weeks, we’re excited to give you an inside look at the secret sauce of Swell+Good.

First up, we’re asynchronous. 

That means that our team can work whenever they want, wherever they want. 

Or, more simply, working asynchronously means when you send a message you don’t expect an immediate response. 

And here’s the deal: “Not only does async produce the best work results, it also lets people do more meaningful work and live freer, more fulfilled lives.”

Working Asynchronously? How? Well, let’s turn to the research! 

  1. Synchronous communication prioritizes communication over productivity. “Synchronous communication is heavy on staying connected. Here, you are expected to be available at all times during the day. In a team group chat with over 10, 50, or even 100 employees, this could mean you could possibly miss out on important information just because you weren’t available within a certain timeframe.” (Read more!)

    We’ve all experienced this, right? Sitting on Slack waiting for a response? Getting left behind as a reply-all email spirals out of control? Watching your colleagues travel way off course on a problem you could have solved in two seconds all because you took a 30-minute break to make a sandwich?

    The worst.
  2. Synchronous communication promotes overworking and increases work-related stress. “Being constantly available translates to working 24/7 with no downtime. Employees, especially those with parental and spousal responsibilities, fail to find a work-life balance, resulting in increased levels of stress that can often lead to burnout.” (Read more!)

    This is the real problem. When you’re expected to be “on” 24/7, you’ll….be on 24/7. And that’s just not a healthy way to live.

    (You already know our opinions on work emergencies. And if not, here’s a hint: You don’t actually have any.)

But here’s the deal, friends. It doesn’t have to be this way. 

When you prioritize working asynchronously instead of rapid chat (or, even worse, constant meetings), you give your team freedom. You give them flexibility. You give them time. 

Sure, we have client calls that are scheduled. And there are some conversations that just have to happen immediately. But 85% of our internal communication can wait—so it does. 

Here’s how: 

  1. Really, really good task and project management. We use Basecamp (another huge fan of async, btw), but you can use any tool you like. The key is actually using it—and making sure that everyone on your team is using it, too. 
  2. Long-form written updates. It’s the old “this meeting could have been an email” except instead of an email, we default to public posts. Have notes you want to share? Type them up. Have a discussion question? Post it and let people reply when they have time. Writing—then sharing that writing in an open-to-your-team forum—is where the magic happens. 
  3. Plan ahead. If you don’t want crazy, “emergency, do this now” deadlines, you need to have a long horizon. Same-day deadlines are not in our policy (they happen sporadically because…life, but they are absolutely the exception, not the rule). This lets people plan their days and their weeks without worrying about missing a key task that got added to their list two hours ago. 
  4. Over-communicate. Asynchronous communication works when everyone explains everything they’re thinking. Over-communication also makes occasional meetings and conversations way more productive because everyone on your team is already up to speed! 

We’ll keep sending you what we’re learning about working asynchronously (and all of our work processes! We’ve got lots more to test and discover and share!)—and we want to hear from you, too! Have you tried async communication? How has it worked for you? Let us know by replying to this email. Just make sure you do it at a time that works for you.