Black Friday Inboxhaustion: The Signal-to-Noise Struggle

Every November, the deluge starts. My inbox goes from manageable to unrecognizable, back-to-back subject lines screaming FINAL HOURS and ACT NOW and a hundred permutations of “lowest prices ever.” I can’t quite tell if I’m more irritated or just tired. Inboxhausted is the word, if there’s such a thing.

Then there’s the scale of it all, which should honestly make us all pause. In 2022 alone, over 1.83 billion marketing emails were sent on Black Friday (source: eMarketer). That’s not just a lot—that’s a digital tidal wave. No wonder it feels like we’re barely keeping our heads above water.

It’s more than just annoying. Every ping and promo makes the case for attention management strategies for engineers, each tearing off a sliver of my attention. It’s not just the deals. It’s obligations, software updates, “quick questions,” thread after thread. It feels like everyone wants my attention, and my wallet.

But here’s the thing—in past years, I just gritted my teeth and let it all wash over me. This year, I’m flipping the script. No more passive swim through a sea of notifications. I’m going to run a Black Friday input reset—actually decide what’s worth letting in, and cut the rest. It’s time to prune, sort, and protect the space needed for the work (and life) that matters.

Too Many Unmanaged Inputs: The Real Source of Overload

Most of us assume we just have too much to do, instead of learning how to manage information overload. The work piles up, the requests never stop, and it all feels urgent, all the time. But what really derails focus isn’t just the amount. It’s the endless flow of inputs we haven’t wrangled. Left unmanaged, those inputs sprawl into every open second and edge out the work that actually matters.

As technical pros, you know the difference between signal and noise. Imagine your brain as an overloaded service. If we don’t set up rate limiters for our inputs—whether that’s notifications, Slack messages, or a pileup of browser tabs—then every new ping gets through. Think about it like attention residue. If you’re thinking about Task A while tackling Task B, you wind up with less mental fuel for what matters now—attention residue eats cognitive bandwidth. Just like unthrottled requests bog down a server, unmanaged info drags down your mental latency, making it harder to prioritize or even think straight.

You might be thinking, “That sounds great, but who has time to prune all this stuff?” Or maybe what keeps you from doing it is the quiet worry: if I turn something off, what if I miss an important update? I get it—there’s always that background FOMO. Honestly, six months ago I was still skimming and scrolling just in case, only to end up drowning in alerts and never feeling caught up. The truth is, small resets aren’t a sunk cost. They protect the deep work that moves the needle.

So here’s my move. I use high-noise moments like Black Friday as natural reminders to do a Quarterly Input Reset. Those calendar blips that feel loud—like Black Friday—work in our favor, because temporal landmarks let us start with a clean slate. Instead of waiting until I’m totally overwhelmed, I use the noise as a trigger to audit and reset.

What am I keeping? Only the high-value signals—inputs that actually support roadmap impact, reliability, or true learning. Everything else gets filtered or paused. I’ll lay out clear criteria for this in a bit, but the point is simple. Our attention is limited, and protecting it means only admitting streams that move your engineering priorities forward.

Quarterly Input Reset: Turning Black Friday Lessons Into Workflow Wins

First: Audit everything. Seriously, every input. I mean every email folder, every Slack workspace and channel (the number gets out of hand fast), every GitHub notification, every Jira update, those constant CI/CD alerts, calendar invites, direct messages, even all those lists from vendors you forgot you subscribed to. I was guilty of underestimating my Slack sprawl—turns out I had “All Messages” toggled in more channels than I care to admit.

To get a grip, try measuring notification volume for each stream, and track how often you get interrupted. It’s a little tedious up front, but you’ll spot the worst offenders quickly. Addressing the technical part, capture how many notifications land per day, and how often they break your focus. Once you see the full map, sudden spikes or dead weight become obvious. Take a minute to note the ones that make you flinch as soon as they ping—it’s a clue they’re costing you more than you think.

Now, decide what counts. Set crystal-clear rules for what actually deserves a spot. I used to let anything “interesting” get through—turns out, “interesting” was a bottomless pit. Ask yourself: does this input change what’s happening in the current sprint? Does it impact architecture, reliability, or a skill you’re targeting this quarter? If not, it goes out. The moment that clicked for me, I realized most stuff is just noise with a shiny finish. No technical magic here—just blunt questions that surface the real priorities, quarter by quarter. Use the criteria to triage ruthlessly, and your workflow starts breathing again.

Apply the same principle to vendors and promos. If an email or text from a supplier or platform hasn’t genuinely added value all year, why let it clutter your inbox now? Unsubscribe ruthlessly—this is your digital Black Friday haul, but in reverse.

Meetings, channels, projects—they’re another form of purchase if you think about it. Before “buying” your way into a new commitment, pause and ask: does this slot really align with your quarter’s priorities? Will it actually make your life or workflow better? Shop intentionally, always, and say no to meetings that don’t clear your filters. It’s just as satisfying as saying “no” to a random gadget when you’re hunting deals.

Set up safety nets for the inputs that actually matter. Use VIP lists for critical folks (tech leads, on-call buddies, direct reports), switch low-priority streams to digest mode so updates show up once a day (not ten times), enable proper escalation for actual incidents (on-call pages only for “true” breakages, not flapping alerts), and keep some saved searches handy so you can pull info when you need it—on your own schedule. I admit, there’s one newsletter I kept in digest form because it surfaces gold about once a month; weekly is more than enough.

That’s it—the input reset is one part of attention management strategies for engineers, not a miracle. It’s a habit. You do the work once per quarter, and attention stays available for what counts: the sprint, the architecture, the learning that genuinely moves you forward.

Running the Reset: Attention Management Strategies for Engineers, Rituals, and Real-World Filters

Here’s how I make the quarterly reset actually happen using attention management techniques. I do guilt-free time blocking at 90 minutes, no more, once per quarter. I anchor it to the week after Black Friday—right when my inbox and notifications feel most unmanageable. That post-blitz moment is a natural reminder. So mark your calendar and treat it like a real meeting.

Let me get specific on the actual filtering. For email, I set filters by sender and subject; marketing blasts, dormant vendors, or “FYI” chains get shunted to their own folders. On Slack, every channel goes under the lens. I pare back to just mentions and DMs, and add custom keyword highlights for urgent stuff. GitHub and Jira? I only watch repos or issues that impact current projects, not the background noise. To reduce notification overload, I gate CI/CD alerts by severity and error budget.

Here’s what changed: I’m bundling notifications where it counts—adding a “group by” to alert policies makes it easier to gate by urgency, not just volume (source). That shift means fewer false alarms and a clear line between what needs my brain and what can wait.

But let’s be honest—fear of missing out is real, and I’ve felt it too. My move here is to create “must-not-miss” VIP rules for core contacts and critical platforms. To protect deep work during focus hours or deep work sprints, I publish my status, no apologies. Escalation paths (pager duty, direct call, on-call handover) are reserved for true emergencies. Missing a few minor pings is an acceptable cost for getting real work done. I’ve missed threads before; catching up took minutes, not hours, and the net win in focus dwarfed the rare catch-up cost.

The reset isn’t static—inputs drift, projects change. Each week, I track notification counts, deep work blocks, and how long decisions take. If a rule adds friction or gets bypassed, I rework my criteria next quarter. Any filter or escalation that doesn’t earn its keep gets retired. The intention isn’t to block everything—just to let through what genuinely supports the work you care about.

Norms, Not Noise: Sustaining the Reset as a Team

Let’s make this stick, not just as some solo sprint, but part of how our teams protect focus year-round. Share your alert matrix—the actual rules you landed on—with your crew, so you’re not just policing your own boundaries in a vacuum. Propose a “mentions-first” culture for Slack and other chats. That means if it isn’t a direct mention or assigned for you, it can wait.

And get serious about codifying notification thresholds in runbooks and onboarding docs. By making these norms explicit, you reduce renegade pings and set a clear expectation of how and when to grab each other’s attention. Even better, framing how you notify people ahead of time cuts down the back-and-forth cycle and helps everyone settle into real work faster.

But here’s the bigger reframe: this is the season to choose not just what you want to buy, but what you want to let in at all. Black Friday isn’t just about spending—it’s about deciding. Back in the first section, I said it felt like everyone wanted my attention (and my wallet). Now I get to choose which pings and promos even make it past my virtual front door. Use the moment as a reset button; claim your attention budget with intention instead of letting it get spent for you.

And if you figure out how to handle inbox zero long-term, let me know. I’m still working on that one.