The Price You Pay For Alert Fatigue

Unraveling its impact on our lives and careers

Amber is at a crowded restaurant, trying to keep a conversation with friends, but the clamor of chatter, clinking cutlery, and live music drowns out her words.

Then she receives a phone call, someone drops a spoon next to her feet, her children are tugging at her sleeve, she hears someone calling her name, she doesn’t know where to turn, she just wants to yell, and the waiter comes from behind, her children keep pulling, she declines a phone call, it’s Samuel calling her name, Sarah is trying to grab Amber’s face, the phone rings again, and she notices it’s her boss.

Amber is utterly drained and more desperate than ever to scream, but she just gets up and leaves.

This is a vivid example to convey the idea of alert fatigue. Alert fatigue often denotes a condition that affects employees and companies. But the concept is now easily applicable to one’s personal life.

Alert fatigue becomes a greater concern when it starts affecting your mental health. Hence, I like to see it as a mental health issue — especially when its proportions become catastrophic.

What is alert fatigue?

Evidence suggests that the concept of alert fatigue originated in the professional domain after a 16-year-old boy received a medication overdose from a doctor at one of the top US hospitals.

The hospital electronic system had, among other functionalities, the capability to help prescribe medicaments. It presented a series of prompts to be answered by doctors and other professionals.

It also had hundreds of other alerts to assist decisions and inform about important matters.

The involved parties clicked through a few of these alerts without much thought. After all, they had been receiving so many alerts that it was natural to start rushing things. However, a grave mistake ensued.

The boy didn’t die but he got serious injuries from the overdose. Repercussions that he had to live with. And only because some professionals missed a few alerts.

Alert fatigue is a state of mental exhaustion and desensitization that occurs when individuals are exposed to a high volume of alarms, warnings, and notifications.

This is true in both professional and personal life.

In other words, when you’ve had enough of alerts, you start ignoring them, misinterpreting, or responding slower. And this will often lead to nefarious consequences.

Professional repercussions

Alert fatigue is being discussed as a growing workplace issue. There are several studies about it. Companies and professionals have started to take measures against it. To protect the company, customers, and the employee.

We’ve seen how healthcare workers can become desensitized from important alarms. Desensitization can lead to delayed responses or even missed critical alarms, putting patients’ lives at risk.

But we can find these issues in many other industries. In aviation and manufacturing, for instance, errors could lead to accidents with potentially devastating outcomes.

In the corporate world, there are floods of emails, messages, meeting requests, system notifications, etc. This constant call of alerts can lead to multiple issues like decreased attention and productivity, increased stress, and burnout, to name a few.

However, the impact of alert fatigue should not concern employees only. Everyone can be directly or indirectly affected. Even as part of a ripple effect that could eventually harm the economy or become a matter of public health.

Personal repercussions

The imagery I presented at the beginning of this article is a metaphor, but it’s actually very close to reality. I meant to convey that alert fatigue can also be seriously prejudicial to your personal life.

Once, I missed some emails from Booking that alerted me to pay for my hotel reservation — although they were marked as important, and I received those notifications on my phone. As a consequence, I lost the hotel and had to pay a higher price for another booking.

It wasn’t the first I missed something like that. It wouldn’t be the last. It was just another byproduct of alert fatigue.

Again, I believe that alert fatigue should be a mental health concern. Back at home, things don’t get any better.

You try to unwind, but your devices bombard you with notifications that constantly demand your attention. Social media, apps, and messaging services all add to the list of notifications.

As a result, you’re always distracted, and unable to fully engage in meaningful activities or relationships.

Eventually, all these alerts make you so tired and overwhelmed that you start to ignore them. You miss important stuff.

Alert fatigue can even promote more serious mental health issues that deserve no less our attention. Such as anxiety, depression, burnout, PTSD, and sleeping disorders. Or be the root cause of other disorders.

Eventually, it could lead to violent behaviors, including harm to others and suicide.

The consequences of alert fatigue are not limited to this. We should be aware of the issue and pay attention to the potential outcome in our lives.

Dealing with alert fatigue

Bad news. There is no magical solution to completely eradicate alert fatigue. At least without getting rid of all the alerts, which is not feasible for the majority.

The good news is that we can reduce our exposure to alerts. Therefore minimizing the impacts of alert fatigue in our lives.

In your home and personal life, you could:

• Prioritize notifications: Configure your devices to limit alerts to those strictly essential to you.
• Define device-free periods in your day: You should schedule periods during the day to silence all your devices and forbid yourself to check them. Preferably, make it part of your routine.
• Limit social media: We now spend a lot of our days on social media, and that’s one major reason for alert fatigue. So, set some boundaries here.
• Take time for yourself: Take some time for yourself and practice self-care. Indulge in some activity that nurtures you, preferably that doesn’t include devices or too many distractions.
• Cut with toxicity: Think whether there’s something or someone toxic in your life that makes part of the alert fatigue. If so, maybe it’s time to get rid of it.

In your professional life:

• Talk openly to your manager: Tell your manager about too much of anything that is bothering you. If you’re the manager, think and discuss more effective ways of dealing with alert fatigue.
• Better prioritization: Implement or suggest better prioritization and organization of alerts in alert systems.
• Efficient methodologies and approaches: Define more efficient procedures to approach tasks that include a high number of alerts.
• Automate and delegate: Try to automate more tasks, delegate when possible, and use better tools.
• Better time management: Learn how to manage time more effectively, prioritize what matters, and take regular breaks.

As advice that applies to both cases, always consider seeking professional support if it’s becoming more than you can handle.

Final words

Now you know why alert fatigue is a serious issue that you should never take lightly.

There are many other repercussions of alert fatigue besides the ones I have mentioned, just like many other practical solutions to reduce its effect on your life.

Being too exposed to alerts, whether in your personal or professional life, means these noxious outcomes can manifest faster.

So start acting out before the alerts become a pain in your life. Recognize how far you can go, set boundaries, and define wise strategies that limit the quantity (and quality) of alerts you must deal with.

And always seek professional help when needed.

Rather than concluding this topic with a full stop, I invite you to share your real-life stories about alert fatigue or anything else you’d like to discuss about the subject.