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Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

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Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#231

Post by sleepybrett »

Kuinox wrote: post #47
smileybarry wrote: post #45

I tweak my Slack pretty heavily to suit my ADHD but 90% of it is: turn off (desktop) notifications entirely. Not "sometimes", all of it. (I just set Windows to DND so I still get Slack's red dot) I notice the red dot as soon as it appears anyway, but the lack of bigger visuals & audio means if I'm actually focused (and don't notice the red dot) I don't get yanked out of it. The other 10% is: * Mute unnecessary channe…

How do you manage to not click on the slack icon despite having seen the red dot ? When I see the notification icon, I won't be able to focus on something else until I cleared the notification.

i personally use the hide feature for the dock.

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#232

Post by zztop44 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #157
zztop44 wrote: post #144

I don’t have ADHD but I get very distracted by Slack. Here’s what worked for me. 1. Slack app uninstalled on my phone. If I need it for something, I install it, use it, then delete again. 2. Slack app on my laptop fully closed by default. 3. Set times (about 5 a day) to check in and respond to notifications and scan channels. When I was a senior manager with lots of actually important messages these blocks were about…

Have you tried Slack in a browser with notifications turned off? Possibly kept in a separate browser profile, so you can quickly open and close as needed? Or even just minimized until needed.

Yeah this is definitely a good idea but I think personally I need the structure of having specific set times to check it, as opposed to it just always being an option whenever I encounter a boring or difficult task.

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#233

Post by theGnuMe »

theGnuMe wrote: post #121
jimmywetnips wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh good point. someone should write an extension that only pings you based on critical rules, like if someone writes "bump", or "hey were you able to check on that?" or if 5 DMs have piled up, then it releases the notification. Honestly slack should do this themselves

Great idea!

>someone should write an extension that only pings you based on critical rules, like if someone writes "bump", or "hey were you able to check on that?" or if 5 DMs have piled up, then it releases the notification. Honestly slack should do this themselves

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#234

Post by FearlessNebula »

willhinsa wrote: post #228
FearlessNebula wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andrew Huberman recently had a Harvard educated psychiatrist on the podcast. This psychiatrist specialized in treatment resistant mental health conditions. He was trying to help a patient lose weight and inadvertently found it helped their psychiatric symptoms as well. Fast forward 5 years and he had written a book, and the tl;dr is that he has seen many patients improve their conditions be going low / no carb. For p…

This episode, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjEFo3a1AnI Dr. Chris Palmer: Diet & Nutrition for Mental Health | Huberman Lab Podcast #99 > My guest this episode is Chris Palmer, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He explains the important connection between nutrition, metabolism and mental health and his pioneering work using the ketogenic die…

Yep:)

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#235

Post by rdl »

Turning off all notifications except for direct-to-you seems reasonable, unless you're being paid to be on-call or something and it's truly critical that you be responsive to the team notifications? Batch checking it every few hours at a specific time. I've started doing this with slack/discord/etc. anyway, although I'm still responsive to signal -- and I wish there were a better protocol for "signal by default doesn't notify, but trusted contacts can choose to notify if they want".

(My first thought: Oh wow, I would be tempted to try to get an ADHD diagnosis if it got me legally immune from Slack (and Teams, ideally), and forced everyone to use Signal, IRC, or some other less disgusting systems when interacting with me.)

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#237

Post by throwaway_au_1 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #146
dahdum wrote: post #78

I started using 4 virtual desktops to manage distractions many years ago and it’s worked wonderfully for me. Desktop 1 is for chat, email, Spotify, and general web browsing. Desktop 2 is for software development only, nowadays VSCode. A separate browser profile is used here and only for development related browsing (docs, stack overflow, live testing). Desktop 3 is data and system administration. Remote terminals, Ex…

This is pretty good advice. But if you are going to hide the slack desktop while you are working then you should let people know. Otherwise, people will expect a response real time and wonder why you are ignoring them. It's human nature.

IMHO expecting synchronous behaviour from asynchronous tools is flawed way to operate; I'd be very comfortable taking a stand against manning these communication channels at all times.

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#238

Post by danuker »

Jare wrote: post #167
paulryanrogers wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Slack in a browser with notifications turned off? Possibly kept in a separate browser profile, so you can quickly open and close as needed? Or even just minimized until needed.

Slack in browser with notifications off, and not at all on the phone (or disabled while not on call) is the only sane way. I will still go to check it quite a few times per day, but I would never survive if the thing is allowed to actively call my attention.

I still get distracted when the tab text or icon changes.

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#239

Post by tra3 »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #209
dahdum wrote: post #78

I started using 4 virtual desktops to manage distractions many years ago and it’s worked wonderfully for me. Desktop 1 is for chat, email, Spotify, and general web browsing. Desktop 2 is for software development only, nowadays VSCode. A separate browser profile is used here and only for development related browsing (docs, stack overflow, live testing). Desktop 3 is data and system administration. Remote terminals, Ex…

This is an interesting take. What type of virtual desktop do you use?

macOS has it built in, as does windows. There’s a mention of yabai upthread which takes it to the next level.

Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?

#240

Post by [deleted] »

zztop44 wrote: post #144

I don’t have ADHD but I get very distracted by Slack. Here’s what worked for me. 1. Slack app uninstalled on my phone. If I need it for something, I install it, use it, then delete again. 2. Slack app on my laptop fully closed by default. 3. Set times (about 5 a day) to check in and respond to notifications and scan channels. When I was a senior manager with lots of actually important messages these blocks were about…

[deleted]
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