Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#81

Post by vishnu_ks » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

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…

> It feels a bit tone-deaf to promote your tool in a thread about unproductivity caused by chat tools.

The entire article was written to promote their tool Nuclino.

>> All of our team's work (including the writing of this article) happens in Nuclino, and even though it's a real-time collaboration tool, most of it happens asynchronously. Without the expectations of an immediate response, our team is free to focus on our work, reconnecting later to respond.

I don't see any reason why one can't suggest an alternative product that solves the issues of synchronous chat apps just like the one mentioned in the Article. Zulip is an asynchronous tool just like Nuclino.

> 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.

Eaxctly! People don't follow rules. Thats why Slack threads are hardly useful. On the other hand in Zulip people always create a new topic for a new conversation since that's how the tool is designed!

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#82

Post by icholy » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

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.

Then work on something else.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#83

Post by beat » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

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 "OMG I AM BORED FOR TWO MINUTES" moments, and I carry a Kindle Paperwhite with longer-form reading for lunchtime and such.

My brain feels amazingly different. I'm more aware and happier. I'm getting more work done. My stress levels are way down. My book-reading rate has at least tripled.

This article refers a lot to Cal Newport's excellent Deep Work, but I wish it also referred to his more recent Digital Minimalism, which is full of useful advice for limiting the ways social media and instant messaging undermine our productivity and happiness.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#84

Post by StavrosK » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

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 difference between the two companies in socialization and how they feel, and I put it down to Slack. The old company mainly had one-on-one chats with anything involving more people being done through well-thought-out emails, whereas this one is pretty much exclusively chat rooms.

This has the effect that you talk about work and only work, as you don't have that dead time after you're finished talking about the thing you need to say "what's new with you?". Instead of privately talking to your coworker and being able to be sincere, you're yelling your conversation all around the room so the interaction is pretty much going to be confined to work stuff.

If you're starting now, I would wholeheartedly recommend getting your communications mostly one-on-one, and using something like Zulip for company communications, which has the feel of email but with a better UI. I also cannot recommend getting physical phones enough, they worked so much better than mobile phones or Zoom that they crossed the barrier of inconvenience, which meant we talked to each other much more often.

It's not a huge hassle to get a Zoom going, but it is some hassle, and headphones/etc are enough to dissuade us from just picking up the phone and calling each other. Desk phones (connected to our PBX) were so seamless that you pressed a button and were connected to your coworker instantly, with amazing sound quality, a microphone that picked your voice up perfectly from anywhere in the room and a physical mute button.

I should write an article about this, actually.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#85

Post by ihuman » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

alxlaz wrote: post #67

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.

> Turn off all notifications except the unread messages count badge and check it when it overflows. ...then keep a straight face while your super Agile manager berates you in front of the entire team because you're hard to communicate with, we have Slack for a reason. Not everyone has the choice to not allow Slack to interrupt you. Some organizations mandate this sort of communication, disruptive though it may be. Ed…

Then turn on notifications for when you are @mentioned, or specific important channels. If someone really wants to get your attention, they can. The noise is filtered out and doesn't reach you unless you reach for it.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#86

Post by beat » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

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?

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#87

Post by jbay808 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #49

fs2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience exactly. The most common observation with Slack is how people praise it as the next big thing in productivity. But this is always during the honeymoon phase, after a few months of working with Slack it usually quickly wears off.

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.

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?

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#88

Post by cc81 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

alxlaz wrote: post #67

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.

> Turn off all notifications except the unread messages count badge and check it when it overflows. ...then keep a straight face while your super Agile manager berates you in front of the entire team because you're hard to communicate with, we have Slack for a reason. Not everyone has the choice to not allow Slack to interrupt you. Some organizations mandate this sort of communication, disruptive though it may be. Ed…

If your nature of work is such that you need to be available then I get that your manager would berate you. It might not be what someone likes to do but for some it is better to be available to the team than to isolate themselves and work.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#89

Post by frgotmylogin » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

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…

I've found that a good way to lower the hassle on starting a zoom is to create a permanently open meeting with your phone number as the meeting ID. Then it is as simple as pasting/typing a link into an IM conversation and clicking it, and if you aren't at your own machine, it's easy to just type it. My only complaint with zoom is the lack of a prompt before launching video. I, and most of my coworkers, have uninstalled and taped over our webcams because of it.

Re: Slack Is Not Where 'Deep Work' Happens

#90

Post by StavrosK » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

Jedd wrote: post #43

ethbro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefit I've found is in cross-team communication. Specifically of the "I need to reach out to this team I don't know about their product" variety. A) If they interact with Slack, I can search previous answers B) It promotes a culture of openness. Huge benefit in some orgs! We talk about our projects, warts and all, in public channels. If all your org channels are private, you're definitely Doing It Wrong C) It's…

> Slack is asynchronous. You are describing a proprietary, expensive, intrusive, demanding rewrite of SMTP.

I very much like Zulip, it's open source and much closer to email, even culturally. It encourages long-form replies and messages with subjects, so it requires at least a tiny amount of thought before you start talking to someone. I think it's a great cross between Slack and email.