Reflecting on my other comment, the therapy angle I would explore is the anxiety created from a fear of failure due to not responding to all of the messages. O

Reflecting on my other comment, the therapy angle I would explore is the anxiety created from a fear of failure due to not responding to all of the messages. One way to test this is to just not respond to a slack message for say 5mins, then 10mins, then an hour, then say half a day and then a day. You will train the folks to ping you less and you will learn that nobody cares if you respond. And the benefit will be that you trained them to go elsewhere. If anyone asks, say you were focused on a specific task (which you probably are) and muted slack or something. Remember your job is to produce dev stuff and not mediate slack or serve as an information conduit for folks. Those interactions should take place in a meeting. Most likely your anxiety will increase at each interval but then dissipate when no negative consequences arrive. You then increase your tolerance and so forth.