You disable the notifications that you don't want to see on the watch. So for me personally I only have phone calls, SMS/iMessages, and one or two other commun

You disable the notifications that you don't want to see on the watch. So for me personally I only have phone calls, SMS/iMessages, and one or two other communication apps enabled to send notifications to my watch, plus score updates from baseball since I follow the sport. Once you get it configured in a way that fits what you care about it works really well.