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Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

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Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#31

Post by lostdog »

rajathagasthya wrote: post #27
brandur wrote: post #11

Your best bet might be to be less responsive on Slack — not only by not responding to everyone immediately, but by not responding to some Slack messages at all. If it's important, the person who pinged you can submit their request via another medium, hopefully in a longer form format like email or bug report that's more thoughtfully considered and thoroughly researched, and which you can reply/fix quickly without spe…

Deep Work is absolutely fantastic! I can already feel the difference in productivity just one week into practicing its strategies. I did three things to Slack after reading it: 1. Mute channels aggressively. 2. Snooze notifications often during the day. 3. Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages (including the ones not addressed to you). This was the biggest source of distraction for me i…

> Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages

How did you do this, and is there a way to disable the blue dot?

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#32

Post by schrodingersbox »

Regarding slack on phone, unless it's a work phone, I'd say delete it. If it's a work phone, filter notifications for direct mentions or channel alerts.

As for slack on computer, I did several things: - snooze all notifications from 08:30AM to 08:00AM (because slack doesn't allow to do 24hour) - this means all channel/here won't trigger notifications and if someone is trying to talk to me, they get a slack tip asking them if they want to trigger a notification, even if I'm snoozed. I assume if something's really urgent they'll do so. Also, as someone mentioned here, the less available you seem, the less people will bother you, and if it's important, there's always a way.

- mute everything that's non-important or generates way to many messages - in large groups, almost always, there are lots of info that's not right away important, you can perfectly check it when you have the time.

- move slack over to browser - I did this for two reasons, first because it saves me RAM (hungry hungry slack) as I don't have another Chromium/Node instance running, and it also removes the red dot notification on my dock, meaning when I look at it, I won't be tempted to check slack for all the crap that constantly comes in. In the browser you have the red dot as well, but because the tab is pinned it's way less intrusive and it almost never bothers me.

All in all, you're getting paid to do your job, not to constantly reply to messages on slack, so this helps you prioritize your attention. I always remember that if something's really important people will bother you in other ways other than just slack. (I have been on-call and I stay true to this as well. When you get called, you open your computer and check what's going on. Constantly checking your phone is bad and does you way more harm than good)

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#34

Post by valuearb »

user5994461 wrote: post #6
intermittently wrote: post #4

I'm finding this more and more during my off hours. I wish there was a way to opt out of all @channel announcements on my phone app and still get notifications for when someone tags me directly (when I'm actually needed). Probably not a helpful answer to your question, but I feel your pain, at any rate.

Did you install slack on your phone? Never install slack on your phone. Uninstall slack from your phone. It's a matter of life or death and I am not even kidding.

If you strictly limit notifications it's okay. I'm fine with being notified of a critical bug or problem when I'm at home, and happy to grab my laptop to help. Even if sometimes it turns out to not be so critical or important.

But if you, unlike me, actually have hobbies or planned activities for your free time, deleting might be better.

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#35

Post by lgas »

We've experienced the same problem and spoken with others that have as well so we have been working on a solution. We think Slack delivers on it's promise to free you from corporate email, but now we need to be freed from Slack.

Slack has an extensive set of options for managing notifications but they are channel-centric and not topic centric. You either disable notifications for a channel and receive nothing or you enable them and get notified of everything. We want to be notified of things we care about wherever they happen, whether we are a member of the channel or not. And we don't want to spend any time managing notification settings.

To solve this we've built a bot[0] that will let you subscribe to whatever keywords you want and will then notify you whenever those keywords are mentioned in any public channel (even if you are not a member). We've found that it has already helped us regain some of our sanity while not missing important conversations in slack.

Our high-level goal is to build tools that liberate us from the information overload that seems inevitable in the modern digital age. Focus is just one small step in that direction but we wanted to get feedback early and often, so please, check it out and let us know what you think!

0: http://www.focusforslack.com/

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#36

Post by ra7 »

lostdog wrote: post #31
rajathagasthya wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep Work is absolutely fantastic! I can already feel the difference in productivity just one week into practicing its strategies. I did three things to Slack after reading it: 1. Mute channels aggressively. 2. Snooze notifications often during the day. 3. Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages (including the ones not addressed to you). This was the biggest source of distraction for me i…

> Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages How did you do this, and is there a way to disable the blue dot?

Yes. Preferences -> Sound & appearance -> Uncheck "Show badge icon"

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#38

Post by user5994461 »

gm wrote: post #18
user5994461 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you install slack on your phone? Never install slack on your phone. Uninstall slack from your phone. It's a matter of life or death and I am not even kidding.

Unfortunately, I'm coming to realize what you say is true. Now that I think about it, there is NO issue that negatively affects my work/life balance more than having Slack installed on my phone.

Great. Now uninstall it before your wife divorce you.

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#39

Post by user5994461 »

valuearb wrote: post #34
user5994461 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you install slack on your phone? Never install slack on your phone. Uninstall slack from your phone. It's a matter of life or death and I am not even kidding.

If you strictly limit notifications it's okay. I'm fine with being notified of a critical bug or problem when I'm at home, and happy to grab my laptop to help. Even if sometimes it turns out to not be so critical or important. But if you, unlike me, actually have hobbies or planned activities for your free time, deleting might be better.

A phone is already a phone. It can be called for emergency.

Notifications can't all be disabled. You're at the mercy of any message from a dude who's at the office 2 hours before or after you.

Unlike a phone call, people don't realize that a slack messages is disruptive and require you to be online 24/7.

Re: Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive?

#40

Post by si13b »

Deactivate your account.

I'm serious, but of course your manager needs to support you in your decision. For me Slack represents a 20-30% productivity hit, and it should be Slack that justifies taking up my time rather than vice versa.

If someone needs to talk to me, they can email or approach my desk. I know this approach wouldn't be practical for remote teams. But perhaps some of the async communication options like Twist would work well?

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