Despite my best efforts, notification culture still permeates through every facet of my life. What we call “asynchronous” communication rarely is, not when the pull to react is immediate and insistent. From work, I’ve trained myself to send an acknowledgment first, a kind of placeholder reply, just so no one is ever left waiting. The toll is quieter but heavier: each ping seizes my attention, breaking the current of thought I had been carrying. A small interruption becomes a fracture, a...
