Joe Casabona:

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:

  1. Log out of most Slack teams. There’s maybe 4 I feel I should be logged into.
  2. Turn off notifications on mobile. Thankfully iOS does make this easy.
  3. On my desktop, turn off notifications for each team
  4. 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:

  1. Building a Focused MacOS
  2. Setting up iOS for Focused Work
  3. Getting Focused in your Physical Space

I’ve also written a book on being focused and decisive about what you do called The Art of Focus.