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Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

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Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#111

Post by sailfast »

"Deep Work" as outlined by Cal Newport was not collaborative at all. It was an individual deep dive on a specific topic, with deep thinking and a lot of time.

Of course Slack is not where Deep Work happens, more than the telephone is where Deep Work happens.

Now, is [Insert persistent group chat software] where meaningful work can happen as a team? Absolutely. Lots of things have gotten resolved, rubber ducked, fixed, etc in those channels especially for my remote teams.

But nobody expects to get "Deep Work" done there.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#112

Post by StavrosK »

mrmrcoleman wrote: post #110
StavrosK wrote: post #84

For a bit of context for the following, I've been working remote for years, five years in my previous company and one in the current one. The previous company did not use Slack. We used XMPP for one-on-one IMing (we did have chat rooms but nobody used them), physical desk phones for meetings or high-bandwidth chats, and email for everything else. The current company uses Slack and Zoom for meetings. There's a big dif…

Even though I know I'm only addressing part of the issue you describe, we've been using Donut ( https://www.donut.com/ ) and it has had a very positive effect on enabling non-work-based communication amongst (some) team members.

That's an interesting idea, thank you!

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#114

Post by [deleted] »

matchbok wrote: post #80
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #45

When I read these kind of pieces I wonder if people know that just because your company has Slack, that doesn't mean they expect you to read everything in it. Company wide/support channels, your basically at liberty to completely ignore these. Some people crack the odd joke in here, camaraderie in a team is nice, but don't feel its compulsory. I mute them, though they're are great places to be able to search! The cha…

But, the whole "checking in on a channel" thing is exactly the problem. It creates a nonsense or a "missing out" feeling for the team. It is too synchronous.

[deleted]

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#115

Post by chungleong »

beat wrote: post #83

It's not just Slack. It's our phones! Notifications are distraction engines. At the beginning of March, I went cold turkey on most social media (I still allow myself HN and a guitar player's forum), and completely cold turkey on using my phone for these things - I have to use an actual computer. I put Kindle where Facebook used to be on my phone, and always have a book on it that can be read in small bites for those…

The thing that I really miss about old Windows Phone is the lack of notifications. They're almost never that time critical. Having the same info on a live tile was so much better. The info streams were properly segregated and I had control over their prioritization through tile layout: important stuff at near the top, shown in a wide tile; stupid stuff near the bottom, in a small tile.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#116

Post by klibertp »

rjdagost wrote: post #18

For myself, Slack is such a time waster that I'm at the point where I only check on it periodically. I tell coworkers that if there's an emergency that needs to be tended to right away, just text, call, or talk to me in person. If there's something that can wait, email is better. After 2+ years of using Slack on several different teams, I have yet to see any enhanced group communications. I do however see massive amo…

Calls are really, really bad for shared knowledge building. Either you require each call to end with a note, discourage one-to-one calls and favor group calls, or accept that the speed of knowledge diffusion in the team will slow down to a crawl. I believe it's easy to see the downsides of all of these possibilities.

Mailing lists, Usenet, IRC, Slack, bulletin board, wiki, GitHub issues - doesn't matter which, use whatever works for you and is most convenient, but, whatever you do, please communicate in text. Bonus points for storing all that text in a searchable place.

Well, once the speech to text is sufficiently accurate, this may change (although there's always that chilling feeling of having so many of your voice samples sent to Google) - but until then, communicate in text as much as possible. Both deaf people, social phobiacs, and new hires will thank you for that.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#117

Post by RHSeeger »

thecatspaw wrote: post #60
vishnu_ks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Topics are not the same as channels. In Zulip each conversation in a channel would have a topic. A channel would be a collection of topics. You can ignore the topics you are not interested in and focus on topics that are relevant. So for catching up all you need to do is go through the topics in a channel instead of going through all the messages. https://imgur.com/UMBuOuh

Just the same as I can ignore threads in Slack which I have no interest in. Its not the tool which break communication, its people not following rules. If people follow the "Use threads at all times" rule, slack is totally working fine. If people dont use it as their social media platform or keep their random thoughts to #random, there's no problem. It feels a bit tone-deaf to promote your tool in a thread about unpr…

In my experience, Slack threads are absolutely horrible. I tend to miss that there's discussion on a thread for hours because it's almost "out of band" to the rest of the communication.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#118

Post by e40 »

protonimitate wrote: post #28

I'll play devils advocate. I like Slack, and having a group communication tool has only increased my productivity. How? - Having a place to easily search for issues others have had in the past. Sure, you can search emails or ask the same questions, but it's nice to search and find answers from other peoples conversations. - Integration for production alerting, customer feedback, and deployment pipelines. Instead of m…

Slack can be a terrible tool if you let it, but it can be wonderful, too, if you tune your notifications, and use DnD when you need it. Also, schedule DnD for non-work hours so you are never bothered outside of work hours, unless there is a true emergency (and if you work at a place with a lot of emergencies, then you have a shitty workplace).

It's a tool. Use the tool, don't let the tool use you.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#119

Post by ssnistfajen »

beat wrote: post #86
mindcrime wrote: post #79

I'm not a fan of Slack in particular just because it's a closed-source, proprietary, walled-garden. But that aside, while it is true that "Chat / IM apps are not where 'deep work' happens", that doesn't mean that chat / IM isn't valuable. You just have to recognize it for what it is, and figure out how to tap into the value that it represents. If that means turning it all off at certain times to support "deep work" t…

The problem is, people take offense at others turning it off. How do you deal with the social pressure to be instantly available and interruptable at all times?

That's a culture problem, not a Slack problem. I've interacted with people who expect me to read E-Mails within 30 minutes during off-work hours too. That doesn't mean E-Mails are inherently distracting.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#120

Post by jackpeterfletch »

matchbok wrote: post #80
jackpeterfletch wrote: post #45

When I read these kind of pieces I wonder if people know that just because your company has Slack, that doesn't mean they expect you to read everything in it. Company wide/support channels, your basically at liberty to completely ignore these. Some people crack the odd joke in here, camaraderie in a team is nice, but don't feel its compulsory. I mute them, though they're are great places to be able to search! The cha…

But, the whole "checking in on a channel" thing is exactly the problem. It creates a nonsense or a "missing out" feeling for the team. It is too synchronous.

So, I think the crux here, is that the below, in my opinion, is a purely perceived pressure. You shoulden't feel pressured to read everything in Slack.

> Reduced pressure to read everything. Let’s face it, it’s not practical or necessary to keep up with every conversation. The aggregated timeline in Level lets you subscribe to channels and sip from the firehose of conversations without pressuring you to “catch up” on all unreads.

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