You should be that person who is not reachable. You need to set boundaries. Otherwise you are going to fall in the classic catch-22 of talking about the work and getting none of that work done. That's fine if you see your job as a paycheck. It's not so fine if you actually find meaning in your work and want to make forward progress.
Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
31–40 of 392 posts
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#32Step 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 problem. Find a new job or seek professional help.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#33> I don't want to be that person that's not reachable but more and more, I'm thinking about closing Slack and opening it 2-3x a day.
Looks like you already know the way forward, tell your team that you will be checking slack regularly but on your own schedule. If they protest, tell them to grab a copy of Deep Work by Cal Newport.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#34tl:dr; turn off the notifications and proritise your workload so you know that the stuff you are clearing is the important stuff first, tell the company you are doing this to focus on your backlog.
This is going to come across as arrogant, and in a way it is, but in a healthy way.
If your tickets are piling up then you /need/ to ignore distractions. Someone then tries to track you down so you lead with 'is it on fire?' and when it is, ok that does rank highly, but when it's not 'sorry, I've got so much backlog I need to focus on right now, email me and I'll look at it as soon as I can, but fair warning, it might take a while' is not only ok, it's absolutely critical. In a very strange turn of events you'll likely see that somehow these critical problems are being solved at the source.... ;)
This also means that the workload you have and therefore the time you allocate to spending doing it has to be priority driven. Start with the flames and work back to the embers.
Finally, just to reinforce the main point here, if the tooling you've been provided with isn't enabling you to do your job well, then find how it will and tell the company what you plan to do to ensure productivity.
:) remember, they hired you to make them money, if you find a better way of making money faster and for longer only an idiot will find fault with that. This is how good ways of working evolve in environments.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is your management chain aware that you are diagnosed with ADHD No, and I don't think it will help, to be honest. They will just start paying even more attention to my work and decide it's not worth it.
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…
Honest question, does this actually help? I avoid disclosing my ADHD now because others at work have either started to treat me like a drug addict, tried to help but have a ton of misconceptions about ADHD, or started to treat me like a child.
The only positive responses have been from people who have it. But it doesn’t help for workplace accommodations.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#36Step 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…
I would add: delete the slack app, and use it from a browser. Then you'll only get notifications when the browser is in the foreground. (Of course assuming you've disabled browser notifications).
This way you can leave slack running, you will show up as available, but will not be disturbed unless the slack tab is in the foreground. (Or someone makes a call).
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#37I'm really sorry. As someone else diagnosed with ADHD it's been very hard for me to be positive about anything. Hang in there, I guess... life just seems impossible.
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#38At a previous company I had a very similar problem, and eventually converted an old SIM-less phone into my Slack device and mounted it in a stand on my desk. (Slack was not deemed a sensitive company app that had to run on company devices, which considering the access to customer channels and prod-affecting chatops features seemed stupid, but I'm not IT.) I could physically turn Slack off by turning the phone off, an…
Also I'd really strongly suggest that you push your company away from a team @ alias and toward a team channel. The only groups that should have an @ alias that punches through notification settings are on-call, and if your role IS on-call then no amount of Slack changes will reduce interrupts.
People create one @ alias per team and also many others for subteams or temporary project teams, etc. There is one for oncall too. Every time one of those aliases gets tagged, I get a notification, an orange counter or sometimes messages from Slackbot asks me to join the channels.
*> punches through notification settings
I'd like to specify which aliases should not be ignored but I can't in Slack, unless I'm missing something.
Also, disabling the oragen counter is not possible (even for muted channels).
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#39I think your idea of limiting Slack is great. You can provide an alternative to be reachable for emergencies if needed.
In addition in my reading, I've come across some helpful nutritional approaches and these were news to me:
http://doctoryourself.com/hoffer_ABC.html http://doctoryourself.com/adhd.html
(These articles are geared towards parents with ADHD kids, but applies to adults also.)
Re: Ask HN: I have diagnosed ADHD and cannot work with Slack anymore – advice?
#40I often close Slack when I need to focus on something. And I'll spend hours of the day with my phone on do-not-disturb
If you're needing to be urgently-reached multiple times a day, there's something seriously wrong at your company. Almost any message should be able to wait a few hours
You mention "tickets piling up", which sounds like it goes beyond Slack. If these are actual tasks piling up faster than you can complete them, that's a whole separate problem with the company and has nothing to do with you or your adhd
If the company does have systemic issues that are making it hard to function on the job, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. Or at least talking about it with your manager