Notification Bankruptcy
Focus on craft, with a clean slate
When I used to work a 9-5, I remember coming back from a long weekend or a vacation with hundreds of emails, dozens of Slack messages, and countless reminders. I would spend the next 3–5 days catching up. I would open each Jira ticket, skim every email, and do any pressing tasks. That was until I decided that this was a terrible use of my time. One should not have to catch up on time they took off; otherwise, what is the point? So, I implemented a quite controversial system: notification bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy is generally referred to as financial bankruptcy, when the debtor is often discharged from most remaining debts, offering a clean financial slate. In the case of notification bankruptcy, I mean the act of declaring that you have too many notifications and you will be archiving them. But how does this work in a business environment? Can you actually pull this off and not get fired? Yes, if you do it intentionally.
Guidelines
Let's set some guidelines. I do not want you doing anything that you think is impossible in your role. If you think that this is possible, but you just don't know how to pull it off, I will give you some options further down. Additionally, don't declare notification bankruptcy due to negligence or being out for a day. Use this method when your notifications are going to take a disproportionate amount of time, eating into real, valuable work.
v1 - Alert the team, set boundaries, archive
If you work for a company that does not have the most modern tools, and you fall into the guidelines above, the best route is to: tell the team what you plan to do and why, set some boundaries around the process, and archive what's left.
Alert
Tell your team what you are doing. I used to simply tell my collaborators, direct reports, and executive team. The first time they will look at you like you are nuts. So go to them with the plan. Tell them that you are going to filter out and archive any non-essential notifications—email, Slack messages, etc. Then you will go through what is remaining. Make sure to tell them why: that this will get you back to work faster and if they have anything high-priority, to @ mention you or ping you again.
Boundaries
This is when we get practical. Your boundaries should be internal vs. external. If a notification or email was sent from your collaborators or from an internal tool, filter it out. Practically, this can be done with mail filtering and any communication channel that is not external (Slack Connect or similar). Make sure that it is only within the window that you were out of office. Still manually go through client emails and messages.
Archive
There is nothing magical here. Once your filters are dialed in, archive anything that matches them. But, only archive them, do not delete, in case you need to pull them back up.
v2 - Aggregate, alert the team, archive
If you work for a company with modern tools: AI, integrations, and connections, this gets easier and more efficient. You are still going to tell your collaborators the plan, but the plan is going to be a bit different. This time, you will use AI to summarize your emails, messages, and other various notifications. Then go to your collaborators with a baseline, alerting them of the archive.
Aggregate
I am going to use Notion AI for this example, but you could also use ChatGPT or your AI assistant of choice—though you might need a paid plan. If most of these notifications are in your email, still filter your email, but rather than archiving them, print and merge them into one PDF. Upload that PDF into Notion, press the 3 dot menu to the top right of the PDF, and click "Ask AI". Prompt Notion AI to summarize these emails or provide you key points. It should provide you something like this:
Do this for other integrations too. Notion AI integrates with Slack and Google Drive, so you can simply ask it to summarize everything that happened between calendar dates. It should output something like this:
If there isn't a direct integration, there are usually ways to export data and import it into the AI assistant of your choice, like the email example.
Alert
Like in v1, you are going to alert your collaborators, but this time you are going with a list of key points. List those out, and tell them your plan. Still tell them why, so they see the value of your method.
Archive
Same as above, just archive what matches your filters, accounting for the same external boundaries. In this version, you and your team should feel more confident in it too.
Notification Bankruptcy can seem like a crazy idea, but I think spending a week "catching up" is even crazier. You should not be punished for taking time off or being sick. Maybe, if your team sees your success in it, you will start a trend, allowing for people to feel more comfortable taking time off and focusing on their craft, rather than notifications, when they return.