Cutting Down Noise

I'm about to leave for a 4-week mostly off-grid holidays. This takes some preparation: planning places to visit, updating topographic maps, completing the gear. At the same time I've been preparing my online / electronic side of things for the prolonged absence.

This basically includes two things:

1. Minimizing the stuff that will bloat my inboxes. Mostly to avoid the post-absence trauma of dealing with hundreds (if not thousands) of different kinds of notifications and messages. These days just about everything wants keep you "up to date", and this is an enormous trap. The mails and notifications are mostly useless, outdated or conflicting. And they contribute to 90% (or more) of messages you get. So very patiently I have been removing myself from any distribution lists and subscriptions. That has worked, as over the recent days I have been receiving significantly less traffic. Calming and liberating this feels.

2. Making sure the phone battery lasts as long as possible. And that is really helped by reducing the background activities. So I went through the iOS "Notifications" settings disabling all notifications for just about all but the most essential apps. Basically leaving Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, Revolut active with badges only. Then in General / Background App Refresh I have disabled almost everything.

The overall result is: way less noise and interruptions. Notifications have clearly spun out of control. 20 years ago I was over the moon when I could receive push email on a BlackBerry. Now notifications create slop in which you can easily drown. No value, conflicting content (see the attached screenshots - they are real and do not make any sense).

The Austrian flight was scheduled for 9:50 and now it departs at 3:10, taking 1h45m to arrive at 11:35 ?

At 19:19 the flight was "Taking off in 0 minutes" at 18:31, that was "Today at 17:55" ?

Who can decipher that? And what is the value of all those beeping popups?