Really, we should be asked if we want notifications in the first place. I find chat apps like Teams, Discord, alert way too much. The signal to noise is tiny. Maybe this is my fault (I never really "got" Discord, Slack, Teams etc. like I got email, IM, SharePoint and phone calls), but I get added to group chats/Teams without me knowing and just start getting visual, audio and haptic (on my phone) alerts with very little context. It's a bad UX. At least my phone makes it relatively easy to mute things, or everything.
I wish there was a mute all notifications button on my keyboard like I have a mute mic and mute audio button. Aside from letting me focus, it would be really useful when presenting. Going through a few clicks through the notification center in Windows is a start, but it is too hidden to be obvious to anyone not specifically looking for it and is a bit cumbersome if you flip things on and off frequently.
I don't have a Windows solution to the "mute everything for presentations" problem, but for anyone on macOS: option-click on the clock / notification section in the menu bar and you'll put yourself into Do Not Disturb mode. Option-click the clock again to disable.
The discoverability of that shortcut isn't great but it has become one of my favorite macOS features.
Amusingly, the first thing it does is put a big countdown clock on your screen, counting down the time till your "focus" ends. Otherwise it works pretty well.
I just turn off my WiFi completely when I want to do work and need less distractions. One problem I have, though, is that toddlers have no "off" or "mute" button, so during non-school days it's kinda difficult to get more than one medium-sized (an hour or less time) thing done.
> one medium-sized (an hour or less time) thing done
Totally off-topic, but this fascinated me because it highlighted how differently people regard task size. If I have a task that can be done in about an hour or less, I call that "very small". A small task can be done in a day, a medium in a single-digit number of days.
To me, small tasks things that can be done almost immediately, medium are things I can do a half-dozen of per day, and large tasks take a whole day themselves. I don't think in more than 1-day increments, lately.
I‘ve turned off push notifications for most productivity apps on my phone, and haven’t ever missed them. Slack and email have no business appearing on my home screen.
I wish there was a mute all notifications button on my keyboard like I have a mute mic and mute audio button. Aside from letting me focus, it would be really useful when presenting. Going through a few clicks through the notification center in Windows is a start, but it is too hidden to be obvious to anyone not specifically looking for it and is a bit cumbersome if you flip things on and off frequently.