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Yeah, this person's position is totally baffling to me. > group instant messaging is, largely, distracting and of little value (more on this later) and can bes

by bccdee 5y ago

Yeah, this person's position is totally baffling to me. > group instant messaging is, largely, distracting and of little value (more on this later) and can best be dealt with in weekly ‘batches’, if it’s required at all. I mean, I dunno about this guy, but I like interacting with my friends. I'll leave a group chat open all day on my other monitor. It's like a break room where you can chat with whoever's around, or all get together and have a nice conversation. Group chats are one of my favourite forms of online social interaction. You don't have to like them, but I can't imagine not at least understanding the appeal. > people are finding ways to pushback on the ‘instant’ part of instant messaging, to put space and breathing room between when a message is sent and when they ‘deal’ with it. Uh, yeah! That's part of what makes them work. They slide seamlessly between synchronous and asynchronous discussion. If I want to hear your thoughts at 1pm, I can message you. If you're busy, you can reply later. And if I'm available when you reply, then we can have our conversation synchronously. But if our schedules never align, we'll keep going back and forth until our discussion is over.

zelphirkalt 5y ago
It surely is nice to be able to chat with friends during working hours. However, it seems, that this is a big source of distraction, which is unwanted in an efficient working environment. Unless of course your friends are working on the same project or you are free to discuss work details with friends outside of the project or employer. Many people are not free to do so. Many people have come to realize, that they focus best, when not distracting themselves with friends and family business while at work. While many people shift effortlessly between async anc sync communication, many people also have problems with that. When you do not respond in time, they get impatient. Some people are seemingly not able to do this shifting as effortlessly. Just a few points to consider, before getting to any conclusions.
- bccdee 5y ago
  As far as distraction goes, you can just mute your notifications and be inactive for a while. Bring up a slack window from work, and keep up-to-date with work events while tabling discussions with your friends for the time being — move from sync to async. Granted, I'm sure some people do have trouble shifting fluidly between sync and async. I don't really have a solution to that, but in practice it hasn't been a problem for me. Maybe if I had different coworkers it would be an issue.

by bccdee 5y ago

zelphirkalt 5y ago

It surely is nice to be able to chat with friends during working hours. However, it seems, that this is a big source of distraction, which is unwanted in an efficient working environment. Unless of course your friends are working on the same project or you are free to discuss work details with friends outside of the project or employer. Many people are not free to do so. Many people have come to realize, that they focus best, when not distracting themselves with friends and family business while at work. While many people shift effortlessly between async anc sync communication, many people also have problems with that. When you do not respond in time, they get impatient. Some people are seemingly not able to do this shifting as effortlessly. Just a few points to consider, before getting to any conclusions.

bccdee 5y ago
As far as distraction goes, you can just mute your notifications and be inactive for a while. Bring up a slack window from work, and keep up-to-date with work events while tabling discussions with your friends for the time being — move from sync to async. Granted, I'm sure some people do have trouble shifting fluidly between sync and async. I don't really have a solution to that, but in practice it hasn't been a problem for me. Maybe if I had different coworkers it would be an issue.