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I'm reminded of this Agile Bits blog post about "curing" themselves of Slack. https://blog.agilebits.com/2016/04/19/curing-our-slack-addic...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Skype is bad though? Like, I want a near-real time asynchronous messaging system that has all the features a messaging system should have... and you can't get that with Skype/Outlook. The two alone are a pain to use.
Sincere question: How is Skype not a near-real time async messaging system? What features is it missing that 'a messaging system should have'?
I literally mute every channel except my direct team's channel. If you need me, @ me baby.
I literally mute every channel except my direct team's channel. If you need me, @ me baby.
It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service. Well that's what it is. Why not use email for the beefier conversations that don't need to take place right away, and use chat for what it was intended? Chat is great for the occasional situation where you want to have a conversation about something, you'll have a bunch of short messages back and forth, and you want…
>It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service. Maybe other posts devolve to that but this post is different. The common repeating pattern he's pointing out is others misusing it for low-quality communication and suggesting some settings to get some sanity back. It's similar to previous advice about old technologies that others misuse where you had to counteract…
"It’s very easy to overuse DMs and see Slack as a real-time chat."
"We encourage people to be mindful about notifications. No DM is so important that it can’t wait half an hour. In fact, I see this still underused. Slack has a Do Not Disturb feature and Atlassian’s HipChat successor, Stride, made this one of its cornerstones, which they refer to a “Focus Mode.” If something is really urgent, people will call you on your phone. Everything else can wait a bit. Uninterrupted time is important — don’t let Slack take that away from you because someone is bored and asks you how your day is."
To be clear, the author does say that you should sometimes consider sending an email. My point is that the emphasis is on using Slack as something other than chat, but that's really its main use case.
The most useful thing about Slack is you can press Shift+ESC (sometimes you have to press it twice) to mark all conversations as read. Inbox zero with two keystrokes. Whoever implemented that, I'd like to buy a coffee someday. (Also, I discovered this because I use Ctrl+Shift+ESC instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Task Manager immediately without going through the intermediary screen that pops up, and on…
dont use it ... if a production is actually not making your life better why tie yourself down to it. just use what works, force slack to innovate
Not sure why you're getting downvotes - it's a reasonable question to ask: "why use something that makes you crazy / stressed out? Not to set up a straw-man, but I'd imagine a similar reaction if someone wrote a post titled "How to use Facebook and not get depressed," the gut-reaction is "why use it if it's making you feel bad?"
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What was stressing you out about slack? How does Email/IM (isn't slack just IM?) solve your problems without causing the same stress?
My theory is that the extra entropy / noise / cognitive load of booting up yet another tool when you turn on your computer didn't match the gain in utility (productivity, etc.) For both cases we used Slack, I agree with your assessment in that we used Slack JUST for IM. But if you already have Hangouts / Skype, what's the marginal gain from Slack? As OP points out, initially most people start using it for IM (as this…
The marginal gain is lightweight group discussion, and the ability to pull people into a conversation that's already in progress.
It actually lightens the cognitive load of which you speak by organizing information by topic.
The most useful thing about Slack is you can press Shift+ESC (sometimes you have to press it twice) to mark all conversations as read. Inbox zero with two keystrokes. Whoever implemented that, I'd like to buy a coffee someday. (Also, I discovered this because I use Ctrl+Shift+ESC instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Windows Task Manager immediately without going through the intermediary screen that pops up, and on…
And I'd like to buy you a coffee someday for teaching me about the Ctrl+Shift+ESC shortcut.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It seems every "how to do Slack right" post emphasizes that you shouldn't use Slack as a chat service. Maybe other posts devolve to that but this post is different. The common repeating pattern he's pointing out is others misusing it for low-quality communication and suggesting some settings to get some sanity back. It's similar to previous advice about old technologies that others misuse where you had to counteract…
The author says: "It’s very easy to overuse DMs and see Slack as a real-time chat." "We encourage people to be mindful about notifications. No DM is so important that it can’t wait half an hour. In fact, I see this still underused. Slack has a Do Not Disturb feature and Atlassian’s HipChat successor, Stride, made this one of its cornerstones, which they refer to a “Focus Mode.” If something is really urgent, people w…
I see what you mean. I think of 2 styles of "chat" ... (1) a vacuous AOL AIM or Facebook Messenger style chat or (2) a business-related channel chat.
The (1) is replicated in Slack by abuse of DMs. However, the author didn't seem to be discouraging (2). (Author wrote at the top, "but ultimately, we decided we want to keep using Slack.")
What happens is many workers bring a casual "Facebook chat" etiquette to Slack which negates how meaningful business chat can work. That's why I didn't think the author wrote contradictory advice. (Similar to how the advice to turn off the phone ringer is not contradictory to the power of voice calls -- because sometimes one needs uninterrupted time.)