This one is a bit random, but helpful!! I know what you are picturing HAHAHAHA, but that is NOT what I mean. : ) Mooning is a somewhat recent term that does not in fact reference your butt, and rather has everything to do with how much time you might be wasting throughout the day. If you are like just about everyone these days, your phone contains at least ONE group text chain. These can be a ton of fun, I know my girlfriends and I have some seriously silly exchanges with some particularly well-timed Bitmojis. But as much fun as they can be, they can also become huge distractions.
Before you commit to what I’m going to suggest below, do a little test for a day or two and see how much time you end up spending checking, reading, responding to non-essential text messages. Obviously this does not include ones you need for work. I think you might be surprised! Even if it isn’t a lot of actual time that passes, what did that incoming alert pull you away from? Did you ever forget what you were supposed to go back to or maybe you were on the verge of an amazing breakthrough for your business or product idea. I know it has happened to me!
So back to mooning HAHA. It feels ridiculous to write that!
Mooning is a very simple click of a button on your iPhone (not sure about androids) that allows you to sleep certain text/imessage alerts. You are not blocking anyone, and you aren’t deleting any messages, you are simply telling your phone, i’ll look when I have time. This way, at the end of the day or when you are on a conscious break, you can take a look at they will still be right where they always were. And PS, they won’t even know they’ve been ‘silenced’, unless you admit to it, which you probably shouldn’t… unless they would find that funny!
Even if it isn’t group texts that you are having a problem with. What if you have a person (or persons) whose messages tend to produce an anxiety response automatically. There have been a couple people in my life where even seeing their name pop up (even with the message preview off) immediately made my heart race a little faster. If you have one of those people, and it’s NOT your boss or someone you need to hear from, you should probably moon them. Never moon your boss… either type of mooning HAHAHAHA ok sorry I had to.
So how do you moon people? On the group message, or the individual person’s message, click the ‘i’ button in the top right corner and toggle the button that says “Hide Alerts”. And that is it! It is referred to as mooning because once you go back to your list of messages, a small little gray moon will appear on the left side of their message.
It has seriously saved me not only time, but helped me get to sleep better. I can’t tell you how beneficial it is to not receive anxiety producing messages right before bed that make your heart or your mind starting racing.
Have you mooned people? Or what are some of your other simple productivity tricks? Whether you choose to moon or stay moon free, analysing your screen time can be seriously interesting!