> I realized yesterday that I don't use phones like others do. I want to be in airplane mode whenever my phone is locked. Not Do Not Disturb mode. I want my modem off. I don't want any phone calls, ever. I'll get to your messages when my flow state has subsided.

You're not alone. Here's how I solved it: Last year I really wanted a new smartphone just for the better camera. My existing phone from 2018 was still working fine, but the camera sucked.

So I bought a used, but only few months old, new smartphone.

And I never got it hooked up to the cell network (i.e. no SIM card). I now typically carry two phones on me. The old one is for texts/phones. The new one is for everything else. A clean separation. At times when I do groceries or something, I leave the SIM phone in the car so no one can contact me.

When the old phone finally dies, I'll just find the cheapest smartphone to replace it and maintain the separation.

For app notifications, I use the Buzzkill app to keep them down. For a long time I had it set up such that I would not get any notification for texts - other than a vibration. No sound. No flashing LED. And no notification in the task bar. If I wanted to know if I'd received a text, I'd have to open the app. I strongly encourage this set up.

Before I got a smartphone, I would turn my cell phone on only for emergencies and the occasional coordination (picking someone up - call him and let him know I'm downstairs). I told people they wouldn't be able to reach me on my cell phone, and to call my home phone (landline, and then VoIP) if they needed me.

Then I finally got a smartphone. I still have that home phone. But boy, I often tell people that my life is definitely worse because of that smartphone. I like the portable computing device, camera and GPS. Just not the phone part!

Definitely of a similar mindset... my text notification chime is about as subdued as I can make it... I mean I don't want to miss a text entirely, but would really rather push it all off. I disabled email notifications and other app notifications entirely. I wouldn't disable my actual phone calls, though I don't like that nearly half the calls I get are either spam, or bots notifying my of dr appts.

It's all gotten so dysfunctional as a whole. My SO gets on Tiktok live chats (whatever they're called) and I'll get into an X space now and then. Once in a great while, I'll pull up IRC. I really do miss the days of AIM an Yahoo Messenger chat groups though. It was fun. I also miss the locality of BBSing back when. With the internet, we tend to segregate based on interest, and you lose the local aspects and actual interaction, get togethers, etc.

> firing up AIM and seeking out someone to chat with. Or someone spotting my arrival and immediately saying hi

The best was when that hi came from the person you had steady started typing to

This. I don't even want my computer to send data / check email unless I tell it to. And I ESPECIALLY don't want it sending telemetry / receiving ads asynchronously.

Phone makers keep touting AI features in their phones, but I haven't seen anyone applying it to notifications.

Here's my holy grail: the phone should, using on-device processing determine whether I want to be disturbed with a given notification now, when I'm not busy, at a specified time of day, or never.

One “low tech” solution would be to get a Faraday cage bag and out your phone in it when not in use