Notifications hijack your focus through Pavlovian conditioning

Every time your phone buzzes or dings, a tiny Pavlovian bell rings in your brain, pulling your attention away from whatever you’re doing. Researchers compare digital alerts to the classical conditioning experiment where dogs learned to salivate at a metronome’s tick. In the smartphone era, we’ve trained ourselves to do the same—except we’re the ones drooling over dopamine hits.

A study from the University of Michigan found that university students received a median of 237 notifications per day. That’s roughly one distraction every six minutes of an eight-hour day. Even mild interruptions take an average of twenty-five minutes to recover from, according to attention researcher Gloria Mark. Imagine trying to write a paper while your phone is playing Whac-A-Mole with your attention.

What’s worse, the constant anticipation of a ping heightens cortisol, the stress hormone, leaving you feeling edgy and anxious. It’s a feedback loop: you check your phone to relieve stress, only to get more alerts that escalate it.

But neuroscience shows that you can retrain this response. By eliminating nonessential alerts, you break the conditioned link between every buzz and reflexive attention. You take control back from technology deployed to monetize your attention.

Begin by auditing all the times your phone buzzes or lights up, then ruthlessly disable every alert that’s not absolutely essential. Create a VIP list so only the people and apps you truly need can get through. Over the next week, notice how much of your stress and jumpiness fades—because you have finally silenced that Pavlovian bell.