How I Handle 200+ GitHub Notifications Without Losing My Mind

Last Tuesday, I opened GitHub and saw 247 unread notifications . PRs from 6 different repos, security alerts, code review requests, mentions in issues I commented on 3 months ago, Dependabot spam, and a release announcement for a library I starred once in 2019. I spent 2 hours triaging. By the time I finished, I had 89 new notifications waiting. The Context-Switching Tax Here's what my workflow looked like before I fixed this: Email notification → "John mentioned you in issue #4523" Switch to browser → Open GitHub, find the issue Read context → 47 comments, scroll to find my mention Slack ping → "Can you review my PR?" Switch to Slack → Click the link (opens another browser tab) Back to email → Dependabot opened 12 PRs Repeat forever Every context switch costs ~23 minutes to regain focus (UC Irvine research). I was losing 2+ hours daily just switching between GitHub, Slack, and email. What I Tried (And Why It Failed) Attempt 1: Email Filters I set up Gmail filters to auto-label GitHub