This might sound crazy to people in my space, as Slack has become the de-facto standard for communication for the lot of us. But it’s also a HUGE distraction.
So Joe took these “drastic” steps:
- Log out of most Slack teams. There’s maybe 4 I feel I should be logged into.
- Turn off notifications on mobile. Thankfully iOS does make this easy.
- On my desktop, turn off notifications for each team
- Turn off badge indicators. I actually have no idea how to do this
I’ve done the same thing on Slack. It has no notifications, no badges and can’t alert me in the moment ever. I do get emails about things like a direct message to me, but since I may go days without checking my email it’s about the same communication time as email.
If you’re interested in less distraction I did a three part series on cutting distraction:
I’ve also written a book on being focused and decisive about what you do called The Art of Focus.