Are Notifications Quietly Stealing Our Ability to Notice?

This time of year, we’re overrun with errands, preparations, and bells. They jingle all the way into the holiday rush—exciting, yes, but also a little nerve-wracking. Deadlines, to-do lists, the looming giant bell that will ring in the New Year louder than any other.

But there’s another bell we hear long before the holidays arrive—a tiny one, buzzing and popping up on our screens 100 times a day. We are asked to be notified. Hit the notification bell. Get notified, turn on alerts! How many notifications does your phone send you in a single day? In a single hour even? And yet, how many do we swipe away without even thinking? We see them when they pop up, but do we actually take them in?

If the root of the word notice is to know, what does it mean when we ignore the very things meant to get our attention?

Seeing vs. Noticing

Somewhere in our daily lives, there’s a junction between seeing and noticing. And orbiting that junction, quietly influencing all of it, is the power of technology.

When I first started drafting this post, my mind went to the number seven. It has more notoriety than 13. Seven wonders, seven seas, seven dwarfs…you know the pattern. But I realized I wasn’t here to talk about any of that. I came back around to the little wonders I’ve been noticing right in my own backyard this week.

Two of them, a daily house visitor and a fleeting event in the night sky, made me think about what we see in the world, what we notice, and why it matters.

Wonder One: Peanut, the Red-Breasted Nuthatch

The first wonder? You don’t need a phone for this one.

Early October, I noticed a tiny, feisty bird in the yard. A perfect mix of white-breasted nuthatch and chickadee energy. I assumed he was just passing through. I took a few photos, mostly to remember the moment.

But here’s the thing: for the last two weeks, Peanut—the name he earned—has been a daily fixture. Now, noticing him is a whole practice. I watch where he lands, which seeds he prefers, which tree he darts to. Seeing is one thing. Noticing—that’s where the magic is. He is very methodical about his seed stealing and I love watching it. One day it rained. I never saw him. Next day, he was right back to his usual habits.

Wonder Two: The Northern Lights

The second wonder? That one required technology—a notification pinged me late one night: my neighbor said “go outside now…the Northern Lights!!!!” I scrambled for my coat, still in disbelief. Less than a year earlier, I’d driven out of my way to see them—and came home empty-handed.

This time, I watched them from my own backyard. It wasn’t instant. My phone processed a three-second exposure. A collaboration of timing, nature, and technology. And in those three seconds, noticing happened.

The Power of a Three-Second Exposure

So what does this teach me? Maybe our phones aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s us. The rapid swiping and dismissal of notifications might be re-calibrating our brains to stop noticing at all. We can’t notice a tree’s trunk growing wider over the years if we only glance at it. But we can notice the leaves falling just a little differently this season, or the extra shade a tree provides this summer.

If given the chance to witness something only through a lens, I choose to see it. Because even if seeing is outsourced to technology, the noticing still belongs to us.

A Daily Practice of Wonder

Since drafting this post, I’ve spent a few more hours outside. Turns out, I have two red-breasted nuthatches now—Peanut and Cashew. They’re a perfect reminder that noticing isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a daily practice.

The more time you spend looking, the more the world fills in its details. Wonder doesn’t just arrive in a single moment. Sometimes, it comes in a pair of tiny tree climbers with a taste for nuts.