[brent_noorda]

A service that acts as a personal secretary which will intercept all the asynchronous events that interrupt me every few minutes (email, texts, app alerts, phone calls, etc...) and will make them stop and make me feel safe that I'm not checking if anything important has happened. Only on the very very rare occasion when something is important enough to interrupt my current train of thought will I really be alerted--those interrupt events will have to be very infrequent and super duper important (e.g. "your spouse just went to the E.R." or "pizza's here").

[dllthomas]

For phone, I was thinking of adding a layer that says "If this is an emergency or your call is expected, press 1 to ring through. Otherwise, press 3 to leave a message or 7 to set up a call at a future time."

Making 7 work well is going to be tricky, though.

[brent_noorda]

iphone "do not disturb" mode can do something like this, I've been told

[dllthomas]

Interesting! Hopefully patents won't get in the way of others doing similar. Do you know if it includes the scheduling bit?

[richardbrevig]

It doesn't do scheduling. The do not disturb feature just silences the phone, so text, calls, and alerts don't go through. However, the feature also has an option that when turned on allows a call to go through if the person calls twice within like 2 minutes. So, call once, declined like phone is on silent. Call back immediately, the call goes through. You can also add people onto your favorites list and they'll not be stopped by the do not disturb feature.

[dllthomas]

Oh, right, I had heard about that. Not a bad idea, but not my ideal.

[secfirstmd]

Shut up and take my money! :)