Texting

I made an executive decision about a month ago. I turned the sound OFF for incoming text messages on my phone. I decided to review my decision a month later to see if I still thought it was a good decision.

My decision? Heaven. Seriously. For one, when a friend (or the bank) sends me a text too early in the morning, I can still sleep. If it's an emergency, the friend or family member will CALL. When I am driving, if I receive a text, I usually don't notice and am able to continue driving without being distracted.

Now, the bad thing is that sometimes it takes a while for me to notice that I have a text in the first place. AND it sometimes take me a long time to reply to a text (or I forget to reply) due to the fact that I don't have an alert for my texts now. But the benefits far outweigh the detractors by far.

When I'm available I leave my phone out where I will visually notice that I received a text. The red light still flashes when I get any message or call, and of course the screen lights up. So it's not like I am completely ignoring texts. I am just treating them more like emails. I will get to it when I have time.

The bank for a while was sending me a text at 4:00am with my account balance. I didn't really appreciate that. I have a hard enough time sleeping, but usually I can get myself to fall asleep by 4:00am...I am NOT a morning person. So instead of turning off the bank alerts, I turned off the text message sound.

Try it. It's a little taste of freedom, in my opinion.