AP
You can't flee to these olden days just because you're getting overwhelmed by pings. It's time to learn how to use Slack.
- Slack is a workplace messaging app that can make collaboration and eliminating email easier than ever.
- But it can be wildly distracting, too. Slack can pull our attention away from our daily tasks, problem solving, and strategic planning.
- The best way to cut down on Slack messages is to talk to the people sending them - but not on Slack.
I thought Slack was incredible when I first encountered it in 2016. And then I didn't.
Gifs aplenty and the excuse to evade Microsoft Outlook were exciting, along with opportunity to turn coworkers to friends.
Then I realized I could barely focus. I was constantly glancing at my Slack channels to see what was happening. Even if I tried to get some work done, a notification would eventually pop up and demand my attention.
But I couldn't delete it either - it was how my bosses and coworkers communicated everything.
I couldn't get out of the channels that pertained to my work, so it was time for me to remove the possibility of my work friends messaging me. Rather than directly asking my chattiest friends to withhold their gossip or errant observations until the end of the workday, I scoured the web for instructions on how to block or mute them.
But Slack doesn't let you do that. "No, you can't block or mute people in Slack," reads a Tweet reply from Slack's corporate account in August 2016. "As a tool for teams to work together, that could make it very hard!"
It was an interesting problem. Most technologies try to make real life cushier and cringe-worthy social interactions avoidable. Delivery apps ensure you never have to speak to a restaurant employee. Facebook allows you to hide friend requests without rejecting them. And rather than forcing you to leave irksome group messages, iMessage and Facebook Messenger allows you to mute individuals or groups.
Slack doesn't have this same functionality. It's up to you to figure out how to cut down on notifications or stop being so swayed by them.
I'm hardly the only one who has been vexed by Slack. RescueTime, a productivity company, published an ultra-helpful guide "to kill unnecessary noise and distractions" by changing the notification settings.
In a Quartz at Work article from March, Slack itself said the team halts chatroom noise with the "polite raccoon." When a conversation has gotten off topic, you simply send a custom image of a raccoon.
"The raccoon is seen as a polite way of saying that, instead of saying 'please shut up,' or 'you're in the wrong,'" Slack co-founder Cal Henderson told Quartz At Work.
I still couldn't quite feel satisfied by all this.
Not even the most streamlined notification settings can quiet bustling channels and verbose coworkers. And sending cute raccoons when you really mean "put a sock in it" feels passive-aggressive.
In the interest of our collective productivity, I asked workplace communication scholars to please, please help.