One of the most useful features on a phone is Do Not Disturb mode. You can schedule it to turn on automatically, and once it does, calls and notifications stop making noise. That is the main change—your phone still works normally otherwise.

I used to put my phone in Airplane Mode before going to sleep so calls and messages would not wake me up. Anyone who has been startled awake by a phone and then struggled to fall back asleep knows how miserable that can be.

When I first came across Do Not Disturb, I assumed it worked like Airplane Mode and simply blocked incoming calls altogether. Later I realized people could still call as usual—my phone just stayed silent. At first that made the feature seem pointless.

After using it for a while, I found that Do Not Disturb is actually more practical than Airplane Mode. With Airplane Mode enabled, nobody can reach you at all. If someone urgently needs you, they have no way to get through. Do Not Disturb handles this much better: even though you do not hear the incoming call, the call still comes in and gets logged. On top of that, you can set up a whitelist, and you can allow repeat callers from outside the whitelist to break through after calling again within a few minutes.

That is where the advantage becomes obvious. Calls from the whitelist are not affected, and repeated calls from other numbers can still alert you. In other words, it cuts down on nuisance calls and unnecessary interruptions while still leaving room for important calls to get through.

I set up two Do Not Disturb periods each day. Sometimes after a midday nap, I wake up and see a missed call from an unknown number. I usually ignore it. If something is truly important, most people will not stop after calling only once. Occasionally I do get calls from JD, and those usually ring through only after several attempts. That makes sense when the delivery contains fresh groceries that need to go into the refrigerator right away.

After switching to the Redmi K40, I ran into an annoyance: Do Not Disturb could only be scheduled for one time period. I am using the factory MIUI 12.5.19 system and have no intention of upgrading. I had previously upgraded a K30 and it became noticeably laggy, so I had to downgrade it. Because I sleep twice a day, being limited to a single Do Not Disturb schedule is inconvenient. The only option is to turn it on manually for the second rest period, and if I forget, unimportant notifications can still wake me up.

A workaround shared by other users solves this and makes it possible to set multiple Do Not Disturb time periods. The steps are:

1. Download and install the "Shortcut Maker" app

2. Tap the three dots in the upper-right corner and choose "Show system apps"

3. Search for "Settings" and select "Activities"

4. Search for "Do Not Disturb," choose "Open," and from there you can set multiple time periods