It has now been a week since I turned off my push notifications. It has been a bit better, but I still see these pesky red 'notification Badges' when I'm on my phone. Turns out there is no real easy way to turn these off.

For iPhone ios users you can go into each app individually and change the notificiation settings. That's a bit time consuming if you have a lot of apps that use Badges.

​For android users it looked like going into the Badges app and Force Stopping would work, but that was short lived as the next notification on Facebook I received just reset it (without the ability to disable Badges at all...hmmmmm). So for now I have moved my social media apps to the last screen on my phone because it is the one I flip past and to the least. This should deter me from app checking and clearing those pesky red circles at least for a while. Maybe the next step is deleting *gasp* and removing these time draining apps all together.
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Well I finally did it. I committed to turning off ALL push notifications from apps on my phone. After following 'Becoming Unbusy' on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/becomingunbusy/) and after starting to read 'Last Child In The Woods' (http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/) I realised that technology takes up too much of my time these days (probably one reason I haven't found time to schedule new content or links on Facebook lately). This is only step 1 of a three step process to untethering myself from my phone.

​I embark on this journey with trepidation because blogging means keeping up with things and people right? Well not to worry my dear friends as I will still check in, it just may not be as often or as quickly 'at the drop of a hat' so to speak. I'm also heading on a vacation on which I don't want to be tied to my phone so I figure now is as good a time as any to try this first step out in becoming less tethered. Wish me luck!