It’s 8.55am and you open your laptop to get ready for work. Immediately, your screen flashes with an alert: you have 136 unread Outlook emails. At the same time, a Teams message pops up to remind you about your meeting in half an hour. It’s not long before Trello is helpfully reminding you that your report is due today. Then a question comes through on Slack from a colleague who wants to run something past you. The day hasn’t even properly started yet and you’re already drowning in notifications.

Chimes, buzzes and dings have become a familiar soundtrack to many of our working lives. They haunt us at all times of the day, making it harder than ever to focus on a single task and constantly pull our attention to other ‘urgent’ matters (which are often not as timely as they’re made out to be).

The mental exhaustion of keeping on top of it all has been dubbed ‘ping fatigue’, recognising the stress, distraction and overwhelm that often comes with being so easily contactable at work. According to a Digital Noise Impact Report by software firm Unily found that more than three-quarters (77%) of employees find notifications from workplace digital tools a distraction. According to the survey of 500 employees, a third are distracted every 15 minutes by a digital notification, leading to around 160 distractions a week.

We already know that context-switching – the time it takes to recover from a physical interruption like a doorbell or a phone call and get back into a good workflow – can be incredibly challenging for our brains, and the same logic applies to pings. A joint report by Qatalog and Cornell University’s Idea Lab from 2021 found that people take nine and a half minutes on average to get back into a productive workflow after switching between digital apps. 

And while the rise of communication platforms, channels, and task management systems means we can now chat with remote-working colleagues, share documents instantly, and easily update others on our progress, there are clearly significant drawbacks to this always-on culture.

“Ping fatigue is definitely real, and it’s become so much worse in recent years thanks to the explosion of digital platforms and communication channels that blur the lines between productivity and availability, and wreak havoc on our focus,” says Victoria McLean, CEO and founder of award-winning career consultancy City CV. 

According to McLean, every notification drags us away from deep work, forcing our brains to constantly switch gears. “We feel busier but achieve less, and it’s an ugly cycle I see too many professionals get caught in,” she adds.

But while we may dream of deleting our email apps and setting a permanent OOO, the reality is that we do have to remain somewhat contactable while at work. So how can we better protect ourselves from ping fatigue and set some much-needed digital boundaries without making enemies in the office?

“There’s really only one solution: protect your time and energy,” insists McLean. “Turn off non-essential alerts, carve out some deep-focus time, and reclaim control over your own productivity. Because if you’re constantly reacting, you’ll always be playing catch-up, and compromising your career as a result.”

At the same time, it’s up to your company to set a better standard and alleviate the pressure employees face to instantly respond to messages. “Communication channels could be much simpler and more streamlined, screen breaks should be encouraged, burnout regularly monitored and employees must be reassured that they’re judged based on outcomes, not whether they’re constantly reacting,” adds McLean.

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