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Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

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Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#131

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

nottorp wrote: post #63

I don't understand. Why do you allow Slack to interrupt you? Turn off all notifications except the unread messages count badge and check it when it overflows. Easy as ABC. I run like 6 different messaging platforms, but none is allowed to interrupt me. If you can't restrain yourself from checking messages constantly, you have a problem not the medium.

It’s not that easy. Nobody is talking about app settings here. It’s about how companies essentially delegate communication preferences and etiquette to Slack without much discussion.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#132

Post by munchbunny »

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…

I've found a set of cultural rules for Slack that tends to work well for keeping Slack a high quality communication tool.

1. If it can be an email, put it in an email instead. Email has far better tooling than Slack for automatically filtering and triaging messages so that the recipient can focus on the important ones.

2. The busyness of a channel should be inversely proportional to the number of participants. Channels with >10 participants should be virtual ghost towns.

2a. Except when you are using the channel for crisis management.

2b. Except for channels where people are asking "how to" questions, for those, either have the current on-call people triage it and call in the experts as needed, or set the expectation that people will get answers eventually.

3. If you need a response in under an hour, do a voice call or find them in person.

4. Employees should not be expected to have Slack on their phones, and employees should not be expected to respond outside of work hours.

Edit: also rule #5: Social channels: they are neither forbidden nor discouraged, but for the sake of your own focus, you should keep them muted.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#133

Post by mindcrime »

beat wrote: post #128
mindcrime wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Hand them a copy of Deep Work ? Also, don't just turn it off... announce to the group "Hey guys, I'm going offline to do deep work for the next 3 hours. Only interrupt me if the building is on fire, OK?" or something like that. Set a status or "away message"…

Sure, technically it can be done. Socially, though... we have a hard time saying no to people. That's a lot to overcome. We have tools for interruption and social inhibitions against not using them.

Agreed. That's why I find it easier if you announce ahead of time, "hey guys, I'm going offline for a while to focus on $SOME_SPECIFIC_THING". At least with the places I've worked, and the cultures I've worked in, I've found that people (usually) respect that.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#134

Post by Tempest1981 »

jasonlotito wrote: post #69
rohtul wrote: post #3

“Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.” That. So true.

I don't get it. Do people open up slack, and then sit there, staring at Slack? Sitting in a group chat, looking at everything that happens, reading everything that happens? I'm honestly curious. Do you watch other people get work done? Maybe in yours, people just chat about weird things all the time? I just don't get it. Slack just sits there in the dock, and I don't need to keep the window open to have it remain use…

I think it's a voyeuristic tendency of some people to watch other people work. You can join a few dozen Slack channels, and peek in on them constantly, similar to twitter or reddit.

Maybe a desire to find drama? Vs focus on your own "boring" problem. The funny thing is, it can make you feel productive!

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#135

Post by Tempest1981 »

smoe wrote: post #62
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…

Agreed. Its not just about the tool but how you use it. For us it actually helps to get less distracted. There are very few things that require a sub 3 hour reaction. So we just put a question in Slack even if it's for the person sitting right next to you. Eventually the person will answer when they have some time. Much better than constantly having someone tipping one your shoulder or calling you Just because you ha…

Exactly. Take pride in being that person who is so busy/focused that you can't be bothered to respond instantly to every discussion. Slowly train others to understand this working style.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#136

Post by tanseydavid »

grogenaut wrote: post #51
skohan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it has utility in the fact that it's a searchable record of technical conversations I have had with my colleagues where I can go to recover details I might not remember from a month ago. Then again email also does this just fine, and doesn't cost as much.

Search is one of slacks worst features and I resort to scrolling which is also majorly painful. I can count on one hand the number of times I've found what I needed via slack search in 4 years with it. I've had it be unable to find the exact text of a message on screen in a channel I'm searching in a day later (tested).

I will have to agree, the search feature in Slack is nearly useless. Or, perhaps 'I am using it wrong' to join in the chorus.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#137

Post by wool_gather »

delinka wrote: post #78
robbiep wrote: post #72

We have a remote team and have recently implemented a rule/trial of no slack after 10am until 4pm - so everyone can organise, everyone has enough work to do during their 6 hrs to continue if the need to ask a question then have the afternoon to answer questions/move forward on any blockers from their ‘time out’ Early days but seems to be improving ‘distractability’

Now to contend with "well, can't get an answer so I'm blocked until 4pm!" In the corporate environment I'm in, this is a fabulous excuse used by many teams from around the world. Works for email as well.

If hard blockages are legitimately happening on a regular basis, being able to ping other people is not a solution to the actual organizational problem, it's just a band-aid.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#138

Post by rjdagost »

klibertp wrote: post #116
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 wh…

I disagree with your "text is superior" stance. You assume that the point of a phone call is to enhance "shared knowledge building", but that's often not the case. A phone call is meant to communicate something directly, and that "something" may or may not be knowledge that should be spread through the team. Phone calls have disadvantages, but so does text. There is information that gets lost when we reduce our communications to text. I find it to be much easier to infer someone's mood and intent when I talk to them vs. reading chat messages. There is no universally better communications mode.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#139

Post by jbay808 »

icedchai wrote: post #92
jbay808 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email doesn't do this just fine. If a new employee joins your group, how are they going to search your inbox for records of technical discussions that they never were part of?

Put that stuff in a Wiki. Or pull requests.

By "that stuff", do you mean "technical communications you have had with colleagues", such as what Slack or email might otherwise be used for? That is what the GP was referring to.

It's hard to imagine using a wiki for that, but if that's how you do things I guess it's fine. As long as it doesn't rely on people copying their email discussions to wikis manually. Not sure how you'd be alerted by an important wiki update that you need to respond to, though.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#140

Post by strokirk »

grogenaut wrote: post #51
skohan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it has utility in the fact that it's a searchable record of technical conversations I have had with my colleagues where I can go to recover details I might not remember from a month ago. Then again email also does this just fine, and doesn't cost as much.

Search is one of slacks worst features and I resort to scrolling which is also majorly painful. I can count on one hand the number of times I've found what I needed via slack search in 4 years with it. I've had it be unable to find the exact text of a message on screen in a channel I'm searching in a day later (tested).

I've got to disagree completely - my search experience with Slack has been really great, even surpassing Gmail, which I also like. There are a lot of tools to dig in to results bit by bit, and they're cached so returning to the search screen is fast after you've investigated a hit.
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