Getting out of Slack

Slack is one of the most popular communication tools for product folks. It consistently shows up in the most valuable tool lists and is typically found at each and every company and community. It’s pervasive.

By default, most people feel the need to communicate in real time on Slack. This baffles me because it’s an async tool! This means, though, that most people have Slack open all day. I believe that there is a micro-manager attitude to Slack where if you’re not in Slack, are you doing work? All of these expectations kill productivity instead of speeding it up.

I try to impress upon my team members that Slack should be slow technology, meaning you shouldn’t have the application open when you’re doing focused work, you shouldn’t have notifications going off when you’re focused, and you don’t need to respond right away. The worst is having their Slack app on their personal phone. You should just delete it now. Please.

On top of the expectation of being always available, many folks are afraid of the transparency of some channels, so I’ve ended up in a mess of DMs that silo information and, at worst, act as a semi-political barrier to attaining information. If you are talking about a project in a DM move the conversation to an open channel. I’ve found a good smell test is if you have a DM with more than three people, there is probably a good chance it should be a channel. Team or community culture will dictate how Slack gets used and the amount of trust that people have in being themselves in their communication.

Like any tool, there are some good uses and some not-good uses. You’ve got to be aware of how that tool impacts your productivity to make sure its benefits outweigh the noise.