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This is all great advice (especially "uninstall it from your phone"). I'll add to this that if anyone involved with Slack is around here, Slack is in desperate
by danShumway 4y ago
This is all great advice (especially "uninstall it from your phone").
I'll add to this that if anyone involved with Slack is around here, Slack is in desperate need of more powerful/flexible muting controls -- ie, not just muting notifications from specific channels/DMs, but actually doing things like suppressing visual indicators in the sidebar, muting during certain time periods, etc... You want to go wild, it would be great to be able to fully turn off channels client-side during certain periods of the day so that new messages literally won't show up until it's turned back on.
When I used Slack, if it was open and there was an indicator for a channel, I checked that channel. It didn't matter if I got a notification or not, the indicator itself was enough to distract me.
I suspect there are a lot of people who have become less productive because of issues like this. A lot of the advice in this thread mirrors the above comment where people feel like they need to completely close the app and get it out of their face entirely in order to concentrate. In my opinion that's a weakness of the muting/UI options, that the only way to really truly tame notifications for deep work in many instances is to completely block the entire app.
Edit: I consider both of these problems faced by OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018044, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014517) to be primarily UX problems that Slack could fix. Definitely the notification indicators -- putting a bright red dot on someone's screen is a distraction regardless of whether or not you also play a sound.
- kennyloginz 4y agoJust excellent!
- pmontra 4y agoIf you use virtual desktops disable notifications and park it in a desktop of its own. Go there to check if there are any news. That works for me. Of course no slack on the phone.
- amatecha 4y agoI check every single channel with unread messages. Sometimes my best focus comes when the Slack app icon stops updating (due to some bug) and doesn't show unread message indicator anymore :) I miss messages, sometimes for hours, but then again I am able to focus without some nagging icon with its colored circle showing on it.
- noir_lord 4y agoI just want coloured notifications in the task tray beyond cyan and magenta. Lot of notifications are automatic slack bots but without looking I don't know if it's a git pr or a human.
- nicbou 4y agoThis is something that's also sorely missing from operating systems.
- Too 4y agoThe whole idea of dozens of channels is just dysfunctional to begin with. OPs case of 1000+ is the worst I heard of. Chat channels usually only have two types of contents; Announcements important enough to be sent to everyone or questions of the kind like “does anyone know how to…”. Some times you also find technical decisions although such usually happen outside the channels in other meetings. Channels are then narrowed down into specialist areas. What I often see is that channels are only grouped by area and not by content type, so in order to catch important announcements, one must also wade through all the questions and other unrelated topics, in all the channels, to feel comfortable you are not missing out on something. At the same time helping people out on the way is very rewarding and addictive but easily consumes all your time.