4 reasons why your phone's Do Not Disturb feature is a game-changer for studying
Most of us study with an attentional nuclear bomb next to us on our desks.
If you need convincing, check your average screen time on your mobile phone. I’ll use myself as an example — I’ve already spent a full hour on my phone and picked it up 45 times. It’s not even 11 a.m.
Many of us underestimate just how much time it takes to “check” your phone. Alex Hibble, a psychology researcher at Oxford, on the Study Exam podcast, emphasized that it’s much more than a few seconds.
“When we try to switch tasks, there’s a huge attentional cost,” she says. “If I pick up my phone and text someone back, I don’t immediately switch back into work. There is a cost, there’s a time it’s going to take to get that level of focus and attention back.”
Related: How to create a distraction-free environment where you can actually study
Hibble continues: “When I check my phone, I know that actually, this isn’t going to be a two-second, or five-second procedure. It’s really going to take about five minutes of my time. And you never know what the text might contain. You’re just setting yourself up for failure.”
To set yourself up for success, try embracing your phone’s Do Not Disturb Mode — one of the best inventions since the smartphone itself! Smartphone developers created the problem, and now they’ve finally invented a cure for the disease of distraction that so often can be a college student’s downfall.
Here are four reasons to take advantage of your phone’s Do Not Disturb feature:
1. Study in a blissful vortex of silence
By using your phone’s Do Not Disturb feature, you can seal yourself into a vacuum-packed, notification-free bubble while you study.
Let’s back up. What is it? It’s a feature originated by the iPhone that’s now common on all smartphones (here’s a guide to installing it on both Android and iPhone). Do Not Disturb goes beyond simply silencing your phone. It pauses and hides all calls, texts and notifications from appearing on your lockscreen. Even if you give into temptation and glance at your phone, having Do Not Disturb on means you won’t be further tempted to sign in.
Related: I put my phone away at 8PM for a full week. Here’s how it improved my mental health.
You can sync up your phone, laptop and iPad, so that all your devices simultaneously go into Do Not Disturb mode when you turn it on. If you sync all your devices, it will also silence incoming texts and calls that would normally appear on your tablet or computer.
There are still plenty of obstacles to your focus when studying, but Do Not Disturb lets you notification-proof your study environment, minimizing the distractions you would otherwise need to swat away.
2. Protect yourself from anxiety triggers
Do Not Disturb mode can save you more than just the time you’d spend returning a text, checking a notification, or getting lost down a scroll-hole. It also saves you from the anxiety and stress of dealing with all other aspects of your life while you study. A runaway emotion from a random text sighting can derail your whole study session. Do Not Disturb mode could mean the difference between thinking about your friend’s break-up, instead of thinking about Triglyceride saponification or the history of the Cold War.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School have studied how much stress interferes with cognition, attention and memory.
“The basic idea is that the brain is shunting its resources because it's in survival mode, not memory mode,” Dr. Kerry Ressler, Chief Scientific Officer and psychiatry chair at Atlanta’s McLean Hospital told Harvard Health. “This is why you might be more forgetful when you are under stress or may even experience memory lapses during traumatic events.”
Whether it’s an upsetting news alert, or a text from a friend about a fight they’re having with their partner, these stressors can slow you down and occupy your mind. Do Not Disturb is perfect for making sure you don’t encounter these stressful triggers until you’re ready.
3. Be the texter you want to see in the world
We live in a culture where the assumption of digital availability is 24/7. We expect our friends and family to always text back and pick up and they expect us to do the same. In college, we adhere to this norm even though we are all so busy, all the time.
Related: College students should prioritize relaxation. Here’s how to do it
Do Not Disturb can be a game-changer for resetting that dynamic in your college social circle. One of the handiest features of Do Not Disturb, is that when your phone is in Do Not Disturb, anyone who texts you will see this message: “X has notifications silenced” (calls will go to voicemail as usual). This allows you to say politely to your friend “I’ll text back when I’m done studying” without you needing to stress over the wording and punctuation of your text.
Basically, this feature helps train your friends (and your mom) to not expect a text back right away, and to train yourself not to worry if someone doesn’t text you back that instant.
4. You can establish your own routine
Do Not Disturb is highly customizable. When you turn it on, you can set it to go for one hour, one day or until you leave a certain location (like the library) or until a certain time (when your French class is over). It’s also actually a part of a larger suite called “Focus,” which has different modes that you can put your phone in depending on what you’re trying to focus on doing. There are four modes on iPhone:
Do Not Disturb
Sleep
Personal
Work
You can customize each of these modes, if you go into “Settings” and then “Focus.” You can set Do Not Disturb, so that you’ll be notified about calls, text and notifications from certain people or apps that you select. Let’s say you want to let your mom, grandma or the study buddy who’s meeting you at the library call and text you. Maybe you want to allow notifications from your password authenticator app or Google Calendar or Lyft or a studying app. It’s good to carve out these loopholes so you don’t have to open up your phone — exposing yourself to infinite distraction — every time you need to check your calendar. You can turn these modes into your own personal life settings. For example:
“Work” could be your blackout mode for intense, deadline-driven studying
“Do Not Disturb” could be for more relaxed study sessions.
“Personal” could be catered to doing creative projects or writing
If you don’t trust yourself to turn Do Not Disturb on each morning, you’ll want to use the scheduling feature. You can set your phone so that it automatically turns on each day from nine to six, or from 10 to three on the weekends, so that you can’t forget to turn it on, and get sucked into a bombardment of texts right as you sit down at the library. Taking advantage of this feature can save you hours, and help you stick to a routine, which, in itself, improves focus, productivity and mental health. If you’ve been struggling to focus, that little crescent moon could be the solution you’ve been looking for.
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