OK, we all do it and we all have our smartphones set to alert us when anything in our world changes, Facebook updates, Instagram posts, new emails, even alerts from Nest smoke detectors when someone is burning Sunday lunch. Turn them off, all of them, well maybe not that last one, but the majority of notifications we get, and then check, are creating a toxic environment where stress and “Fear of Missing Out” can breed.

Do we really need all these interruptions?

We’ve even started to add notifications to our desktop interfaces. These nano-interruptions are damaging your productivity. According to a University of California-Irvine study, regaining your initial momentum following an interruption can take, on average, upwards of 20 minutes. So every time you switch away from that important task to check your phone or desktop notification only to find that it was someone liking your latest cat photo you’re pretty much back to square one on the ladder of concentration.

Even worse, an experiment conducted at the University of London found that we lose as many as 10 IQ points when we allow our work to be interrupted by seemingly benign distractions like emails and text messages. So we’re not only wasting time, but we are also getting dumber.

If you haven’t already broken your New Year’s resolutions, how about giving yourself the challenge of switching off all notifications.