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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#261

Post by danShumway »

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…

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=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.

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

#262

Post by Eleison23 »

krageon wrote: post #23
toomuchtodo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re in the US, I would request a formal reasonable accommodation from HR with your medical evidence. This establishes a paper trail in the event they attempt to terminate you due to your medical condition. My recommendation would be to codify the expectations around response time and Slack interactions in writing as the accommodation. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/ac... https://www.e…

Once you need to start worrying about paper trails, your life within the corporation will have become an utter nightmare. Sharing medical information with your employer should be an absolute last resort, which isn't where OP appears to find themselves (given that muting notifications and checking it every once in a while is on the table).

No post body was provided.

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

#264

Post by stedman »

s1k3 wrote: post #32

Step 1 - turn off all notifications, noise and badges. This will allow you to not be disturbed by interruptions. Step 2 - if step 1 doesn’t work then shut slack down while working. Being reachable 100% of the time is insane. And the barrier for bugging is super low with Slack. Step 3 - if 2,3 don’t work then use something like dispatch.do to prioritize all the junk and filter out all the noise. Step 4 - it’s a you pr…

Thanks for the shoutout re https://dispatch.do

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

#265

Post by MarathonSeeker »

lynchdt wrote: post #25

I work mostly with Engineering teams, and consider slack inbound a pathology. Slack is great for collab in places, but it’s not a strong way to manage inbound, IMO. The teams I’m responsible for make it easy for their stakeholder to raise issues, asks in a more deliberate, calmer way e.g. via GitHub issues or manager email. In exchange, we commit to mutually agreed response times on certain categories of business cri…

It starts with a culture where I'm not sweating the fact that I haven't checked my Slack notifications in a while.

Slack is used like a kitchen sink in the two places I've used it - there is no easy way to determine what is urgent vs what can wait. One literally has to comb through all the red dots to filter them. If you believe channels solve this because you can create dedicated channels for the important stuff, very soon someone starts abusing the responsiveness on this channel to their selfish ends, first seeking an exception, and very soon making it a habit.

To top this, the Slack UX is literally designed to maximize the time one spends with it. I often find myself on Slack intending to either - 1. Check one of the important channels or 2. Recollect something someone shared that I now need to use

And before I know it, I'm responding to something that I didn't need to at this time. I often also forget why I came here in the first place.

Yes, email and ticketing are also pervaded by spam, but Slack is essentially a corporate sponsored, culturally accepted medium for noise and distraction with no easy way to apply controls.

You typically need strong leadership to define the constraints through culture, because the tool by itself isn't designed for this.

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

#267

Post by zztop44 »

troebr wrote: post #241
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…

Unrelated - did you go from management back to IC? Or a quieter management role.

I started a small agency and do consulting. So now I’m a guest in various different project channels across several client Slack teams + manage my own contractors etc. Much quieter :)

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

#268

Post by _smmt »

jareklupinski wrote: post #96
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then there's the anxiety of waiting like 4 hours, opening it, and seeing a bunch of critical messages you weren't around for. I need either a robot that will gently tap me on the shoulder and quietly tell me to check my notifications, or somehow relay the badge to a collar on my dog so he can bark at me. The badge is the worst. The sounds are the worst. At this point I rather just have a landline people can call…

I've completely forgotten about the era when anyone could screen their own calls with the equipment they already had, they just needed to figure out "oh I should let _every_ call go to voicemail after one ring and wait to hear who it actually is first" How did we go backwards? rhetorical question, but can we bring it back with what we currently have?

>How did we go backwards?

By incentivizing smart people to tinker with silly crap instead of work on meaningful problems.

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

#270

Post by SpeedilyDamage »

rqmedes wrote: post #48

Not related to slack, but managing your ADHD symptoms. Look into a low oxalate diet, it really helped me and my children. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21911305/ https://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/articles-1/2015/11/13/... https://korunutrition.com/autism-low-oxalate-diet/ https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/vegetarianism-and...

Please don't give advice like this on the Internet; you are not a qualified physician, you do not know what this person's life actually is, what medicines they're currently taking, what allergies they have, etc.

You could literally kill someone with the wrong "benign" advice at the wrong time. Turning off Slack won't kill anyone (probably) but suggesting a diet or medication very well could.

Just don't do it.

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