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Slack is good, notifications are bad, and this is a rant. This post reads to me as another snowflake in the very justified avalanche of "Internet is drowning m

Slack is good, notifications are bad, and this is a rant. This post reads to me as another snowflake in the very justified avalanche of "Internet is drowning me in pointless chatter" complaints that define our time. I use Slack this way with my team and it works wonderfully for me: - I disable all notifications - I tell people to PM me if they need me to act - I tell people to carry on discussion in the relevant project/topic channel if they need to chat about said project/topic These points are ordered by importance. The first is vastly more important than the others and extends beyond Slack. I aggressively disable notifications of all kinds from all things. If I can't disable them I at least disable their ability to make sound or vibrate. I have one way to be immediately "notified" and that is to call my mobile. I can count the people who know and use that number on one hand. They're so close to me that they know if I truly need to be informed of something now - in their respective sphere of family, friends, or work - and they call me and I pick up. The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending on my bandwidth. The other channels I read if and only if I have a justified need to know what's going on with that project/topic. Or if I have downtime and am curious about something. Grazing on info about what my team is up to in project X is a nicer distraction than watching TV. I am also that crazy guy who actually uninstalled Facebook from his phone and just goes to the website when he feels like catching up with friends. So I'm not subject to that megacorp's constant interruptions either. I don't feel like my life has lost anything at all by doing this. The problem isn't Slack, it isn't Facebook, it's notifications, turn them off and tell the world that if they want your attention they have to call you and they can't have your number unless you love them.

sotojuan 10y ago
Couldn't have said it better myself. Disabling notifications (sometimes I go as far as disabling the red "1" bubble on messaging services) has been the best productivity boost.
greggman 10y ago
Turnig off notificwtions wouldn't solve it for me. With email I read through what others thought was important enough to include me. Even on mailing lists I can mute threads I'm not interested in With slack I have to read everything. It's like having to read through not just my inbox but also everyone else's inbox and on top of that no way to mute threads period. Sure I can not follow a channel. That equivalent to a unsubscribing from a mailing list. But, like I said above, a mailing list has threads so I can mute or ignore any threads I'm not interested in. With slack I have to read it all
- solipsism 10y ago
  No. You don't have to read it all. Treat Slack like a hallway conversation. Do you insist on being there for every hallway conversation? Of course not. If you miss one that's okay because people know to put anything important in an email or on a wiki, after the hallway conversation is done. Treat Slack the same way. If it's the only place any important conversation lives you're doing it wrong.
  - voidlogic 10y ago
    >Do you insist on being there for every hallway conversation? Of course not. Lots of people have a pathological fear of being left out / not in the know. Just the other day a co-worker was lamenting how much time he spends checking all the channels just because he didn't want to miss something... Because slack hallway conversations have a lower barrier than real ones, therefore it can be more taxing on people than real life, or other forms of communication, would be.
  - greggman 10y ago
    Slack isn't treated that way. It's not the same as a hallway conversion. There's no record of a hallway conversation and no way to search or reference a hallway conversation. It's therefore impossible for anyone in a hallway conversion to think other people could do those things and therefore they don't act as though others could do those things. Slack on the other hand those things are possible and because they are possible many people expect their conversations on slack will be/must be referenced. You can claim all you want that's not what they should do but it's empirically what a large percentage of slack users actually do
    - solipsism 10y ago
      That's fine. They can do that, and then complain about it. If they happen to listen to me they'll be happier and not annoy everyone by complaining about features.
swampthinker 10y ago
Honestly, I uninstalled the Facebook app because it was chewing my battery life. Otherwise would have kept the app.
Brajeshwar 10y ago
Totally agree of disabling notifications. About 2 years back, I wrote few steps to help my friends be more productive, by disabling notifications, and I believe it is valid today too - http://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activities-stop-notifications/ http://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activit...
- soberhoff 10y ago
  Doesn't disabling notifications invite the tendency to poll for updates? That would seem worse to me.
  - Brajeshwar 10y ago
    Yes, that is the first withdrawal. You'll then learn to ignore it, eventually - manually poll only when you need it.
    - apatters 10y ago
      This happened to me as well after disabling notifications. Semi-obsessive polling at the beginning but eventually I got busier with more important things and the habit disappeared.
Ntrails 10y ago
> The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending on my bandwidth. At this point it sounds like slack is now just email at which point I question the value it is adding. Assuming everyone else does the same things in the same way you'll never have a responsive conversation over slack like this and may as well skip it entirely.
- apatters 10y ago
  The merits of a Slack PM over email are few and debatable, I agree. However only a member of my team can PM me on Slack and anyone can email me, so my Slack messages have a better signal to noise ratio. Slack adds much more value in the area of project-oriented channels which do get a lot of real-time conversation happening in them during business hours, and also retain an email-like record for anyone who logs in later on and wants to catch up.
kavbojka 10y ago
Totally relate. I deleted Twitter from my phone and just use it either through the browser on my phone or whenever I have a moment to open Tweetdeck. My issue was notifications and the ENDLESS scroll - https://medium.com/@kavbojka/how-i-made-twitter-manageable-for-me-f6f1ac2f595#.9qut80tn2 https://medium.com/@kavbojka/how-i-made-twitter-manageable-f...

sotojuan 10y ago

Couldn't have said it better myself. Disabling notifications (sometimes I go as far as disabling the red "1" bubble on messaging services) has been the best productivity boost.

greggman 10y ago

Turnig off notificwtions wouldn't solve it for me. With email I read through what others thought was important enough to include me. Even on mailing lists I can mute threads I'm not interested in With slack I have to read everything. It's like having to read through not just my inbox but also everyone else's inbox and on top of that no way to mute threads period. Sure I can not follow a channel. That equivalent to a unsubscribing from a mailing list. But, like I said above, a mailing list has threads so I can mute or ignore any threads I'm not interested in. With slack I have to read it all

solipsism 10y ago
No. You don't have to read it all. Treat Slack like a hallway conversation. Do you insist on being there for every hallway conversation? Of course not. If you miss one that's okay because people know to put anything important in an email or on a wiki, after the hallway conversation is done. Treat Slack the same way. If it's the only place any important conversation lives you're doing it wrong.
- voidlogic 10y ago
  >Do you insist on being there for every hallway conversation? Of course not. Lots of people have a pathological fear of being left out / not in the know. Just the other day a co-worker was lamenting how much time he spends checking all the channels just because he didn't want to miss something... Because slack hallway conversations have a lower barrier than real ones, therefore it can be more taxing on people than real life, or other forms of communication, would be.
- greggman 10y ago
  Slack isn't treated that way. It's not the same as a hallway conversion. There's no record of a hallway conversation and no way to search or reference a hallway conversation. It's therefore impossible for anyone in a hallway conversion to think other people could do those things and therefore they don't act as though others could do those things. Slack on the other hand those things are possible and because they are possible many people expect their conversations on slack will be/must be referenced. You can claim all you want that's not what they should do but it's empirically what a large percentage of slack users actually do
  - solipsism 10y ago
    That's fine. They can do that, and then complain about it. If they happen to listen to me they'll be happier and not annoy everyone by complaining about features.

swampthinker 10y ago

Honestly, I uninstalled the Facebook app because it was chewing my battery life. Otherwise would have kept the app.

Brajeshwar 10y ago

Totally agree of disabling notifications. About 2 years back, I wrote few steps to help my friends be more productive, by disabling notifications, and I believe it is valid today too - http://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activities-stop-notifications/ http://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activit...

soberhoff 10y ago
Doesn't disabling notifications invite the tendency to poll for updates? That would seem worse to me.
- Brajeshwar 10y ago
  Yes, that is the first withdrawal. You'll then learn to ignore it, eventually - manually poll only when you need it.
  - apatters 10y ago
    This happened to me as well after disabling notifications. Semi-obsessive polling at the beginning but eventually I got busier with more important things and the habit disappeared.

Ntrails 10y ago

> The PMs I read and act on when it's my Slacking time. I open up Slack and crank through them. Slacking time happens one or more times a day depending on my bandwidth. At this point it sounds like slack is now just email at which point I question the value it is adding. Assuming everyone else does the same things in the same way you'll never have a responsive conversation over slack like this and may as well skip it entirely.

apatters 10y ago
The merits of a Slack PM over email are few and debatable, I agree. However only a member of my team can PM me on Slack and anyone can email me, so my Slack messages have a better signal to noise ratio. Slack adds much more value in the area of project-oriented channels which do get a lot of real-time conversation happening in them during business hours, and also retain an email-like record for anyone who logs in later on and wants to catch up.

kavbojka 10y ago

Totally relate. I deleted Twitter from my phone and just use it either through the browser on my phone or whenever I have a moment to open Tweetdeck. My issue was notifications and the ENDLESS scroll - https://medium.com/@kavbojka/how-i-made-twitter-manageable-for-me-f6f1ac2f595#.9qut80tn2 https://medium.com/@kavbojka/how-i-made-twitter-manageable-f...