Whenever I’m in a meeting I put my phone on “moon mode”, where all notifications are turned off. If someone has to get in touch with me, they need to call twice in quick succession for my phone to buzz and alert me. The moon mode is automatically switched on every night at 10pm, and notifications are turned off until 6 am.
In fact, in the night, another mode called “screen time” is operational, where I’m not allowed to open any apps apart from the ones I’ve explicitly permitted. This includes the clock (for alarm), Google Maps (in case I’m out) and Spotify and Amazon Music (for my lullabies).
In fact, Screen Time is so strict that any notifications I might have got (overnight mails or messages) are not displayed on the home screen until 6am. This way, in case I wake up in the middle of the night and look at my phone to see the time, I don’t end up seeing something that might cause anxiety.
This is all good in the virtual world, but I need to install something like this for home. Again the purposes are similar to the moon mode that I use on my phone.
Firstly, the wife and I use the home as our offices, and don’t want to be disturbed here. Sundry people, including relatives and friends, assume that since we’re at home all the time we are unemployed and they can drop in any time. And when we’re working, we want the “home moon mode” on so that the doorbell doesn’t ring.
Secondly, in our two years in London, we got enamoured by the Western practice of putting kids to bed early, and despite massive difficulties, we’ve been attempting to do the same here. Like last night the daughter was asleep by 7:20.
And it is critical that (especially) while we are putting her to bed, and when she is asleep, the doorbell doesn’t ring. And since 7pm is an unusual time for kids to be put to bed in India, the doorbell continues to buzz. And of course we don’t want the doorbell to buzz after we’ve gone to bed either.
In short, we need a “moon mode” for home. The simplest solution would be to get a doorbell that can be turned on and off at will (right now it’s a bit high up and out of reach, but should be able to manage that). That works for the time when we’re in meetings or working at home or other wise busy, but it might be a pain to remember to turn it off every night (and turn it on in the morning).
So I’m wondering if we should get a doorbell that is connected to an app, where we can set times of day when it is automatically on and off (with the ability to override).
Then again I don’t want to give my data to some random company (and I’m a bit spooked by hacking of random internet-connected devices), so I might end up going for a simpler solution – an “offline device” which I can hopefully program to go on and off at certain times, and maybe change tune for the night!
Now to find such a device.