
Ask HN: What to do when Slack gets too disruptive? - cdnsteve
We started using Slack a year+ ago when our team was smaller. Since then we&#x27;ve added other departments, groups and lots more users. The amount of noise and interruptions is becoming extremely distracting as a developer. I&#x27;m at the point of turning it off for 3&#x2F;4 of the day. Check-in during the morning and near end of day then turn it off.<p>Is anyone else feeling like this?
How do you keep the noise and distractions down? It seems like Slack is ideal for smaller groups but since we&#x27;ve brought more people in, added more channels, folks started doing group chats you&#x27;re always &quot;On-Call&quot;.
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MikeKusold
Turn off notifications for channels that aren't relevant to you. I have 3
channels that I get notified on every message, the vast majority only if I get
mentioned, and some that have notifications disabled.

Also chastise (professionally) people that abuse @channel for things that
don't warrant interrupting everyone.

------
brandur
Your best bet might be to be less responsive on Slack — not only by not
responding to everyone immediately, but by not responding to some Slack
messages at all. If it's important, the person who pinged you can submit their
request via another medium, hopefully in a longer form format like email or
bug report that's more thoughtfully considered and thoroughly researched, and
which you can reply/fix quickly without spending 10 to 30 minutes of your work
day in tight synchronous communication.

It's sort of a bad thing to do, but you will start getting fewer Slack
messages. People have an implicit understanding of who's likely to respond in
a timely manner, and somewhat ironically, it's the most responsive people who
have to improve their responsiveness __even more __because by being responsive
they 'll get even more messages and interruptions.

On a meta note, it continues to surprise me that more people and companies
aren't talking about the highly distracting effects of the software. It works
great at small scale, but if you get large enough everyone's pinging everyone
all the time. I recently read __Deep Work __by Cal Newport (excellent book by
the way [1]) and couldn 't help but being mildly entertained when they get
into the time draining effects of email (it seems to have been written a
little before Slack caught on). The distraction engine created by Slack is the
SR-71's Pratt & Whitney J58 [2] compared to email's 5 HP motor out of an
everyday golf cart.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-
Distracted/...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-
Distracted/dp/1455586692)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58)

~~~
rajathagasthya
Deep Work is absolutely fantastic! I can already feel the difference in
productivity just one week into practicing its strategies. I did three things
to Slack after reading it:

1\. Mute channels aggressively.

2\. Snooze notifications often during the day.

3\. Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages
(including the ones not addressed to you). This was the biggest source of
distraction for me in Slack.

~~~
lostdog
> Disable the red dot badge icon in the Slack app for any new messages

How did you do this, and is there a way to disable the blue dot?

~~~
rajathagasthya
Yes. Preferences -> Sound & appearance -> Uncheck "Show badge icon"

------
atmosx
I find strange that they don't support "mute" for custom group of users,
notifications or integrations.

For example, I need to receive notifications from channel #servers on my
mobile, but I don't want to receive ALL notifications. I'd like to have the
ability to include and exclude based on source (username, integration, etc.)

~~~
t0mbstone
If you want advanced notifications that use regular expressions or whatever
kind of rules you can dream up, you can always write a slack bot that listens
to channels you are in and pings you directly whenever a rule matches. Any
average software dev should be able to write a bot that does that, with less
than a couple of hours worth of work. There are all sorts of existing bots
that are open source and that can be easily modified and deployed. Slack's API
is phenomenal.

------
lgas
We've experienced the same problem and spoken with others that have as well so
we have been working on a solution. We think Slack delivers on it's promise to
free you from corporate email, but now we need to be freed from Slack.

Slack has an extensive set of options for managing notifications but they are
channel-centric and not topic centric. You either disable notifications for a
channel and receive nothing or you enable them and get notified of everything.
We want to be notified of things we care about wherever they happen, whether
we are a member of the channel or not. And we don't want to spend any time
managing notification settings.

To solve this we've built a bot[0] that will let you subscribe to whatever
keywords you want and will then notify you whenever those keywords are
mentioned in any public channel (even if you are not a member). We've found
that it has already helped us regain some of our sanity while not missing
important conversations in slack.

Our high-level goal is to build tools that liberate us from the information
overload that seems inevitable in the modern digital age. Focus is just one
small step in that direction but we wanted to get feedback early and often, so
please, check it out and let us know what you think!

0: [http://www.focusforslack.com/](http://www.focusforslack.com/)

------
schrodingersbox
Regarding slack on phone, unless it's a work phone, I'd say delete it. If it's
a work phone, filter notifications for direct mentions or channel alerts.

As for slack on computer, I did several things: \- snooze all notifications
from 08:30AM to 08:00AM (because slack doesn't allow to do 24hour) - this
means all channel/here won't trigger notifications and if someone is trying to
talk to me, they get a slack tip asking them if they want to trigger a
notification, even if I'm snoozed. I assume if something's really urgent
they'll do so. Also, as someone mentioned here, the less available you seem,
the less people will bother you, and if it's important, there's always a way.

\- mute everything that's non-important or generates way to many messages - in
large groups, almost always, there are lots of info that's not right away
important, you can perfectly check it when you have the time.

\- move slack over to browser - I did this for two reasons, first because it
saves me RAM (hungry hungry slack) as I don't have another Chromium/Node
instance running, and it also removes the red dot notification on my dock,
meaning when I look at it, I won't be tempted to check slack for all the crap
that constantly comes in. In the browser you have the red dot as well, but
because the tab is pinned it's way less intrusive and it almost never bothers
me.

All in all, you're getting paid to do your job, not to constantly reply to
messages on slack, so this helps you prioritize your attention. I always
remember that if something's really important people will bother you in other
ways other than just slack. (I have been on-call and I stay true to this as
well. When you get called, you open your computer and check what's going on.
Constantly checking your phone is bad and does you way more harm than good)

------
gm
I defintiely feel it. On my computer, I can just quit the Slack app and that's
it. But on my cell phone, unless I put the whole phone on "do not disturb", I
cannot escape Slack.

The "disbale notifications on the specific channels" does not work for me,
because I do not actually want to do so. I just want to not get notifications
during off hours (or at meetings, family stuff, etc), and I not want to
configure it (or set myself away) for every team I'm logged in (right now,
that's 10 teams).

Slack needs a global "mute" button. Slack feels designed as if it's a complete
surprise to the Slack devs that people might join more than one team. There is
nothing about Slack that's global, other than being able to log into multiple
teams on one instance of the application.

I've been waiting for a global mute button since forever, but these guys just
keep assuming we're all part of only one Slack team.

------
si13b
Deactivate your account.

I'm serious, but of course your manager needs to support you in your decision.
For me Slack represents a 20-30% productivity hit, and it should be Slack that
justifies taking up my time rather than vice versa.

If someone needs to talk to me, they can email or approach my desk. I know
this approach wouldn't be practical for remote teams. But perhaps some of the
async communication options like Twist would work well?

~~~
t0mbstone
Wow. You really don't seem to understand how to use slack.

All anyone has to do to make slack manageable is just mute all of the channels
they are in and disable notifications for anything except direct mentions and
direct messages.

Done. Now you can still be reached for a direct chat (if necessary), but you
aren't forcing people to write you a letter.

Anyone who thinks email is an efficient method of communication is a moron.

~~~
si13b
Do you always try to make your point by attacking people?

~~~
t0mbstone
I apologize. The reason I came on so offensively is because you are spreading
something that I perceive as misinformation. Misinformation, I might add, that
when heard by the masses, makes my day-to-day job harder.

For example, there are people in my company who are just like you. They can't
be bothered to learn how to use slack. They are hard to get a hold of. They
are always offline. When asked, they spout misinformation about how
distracting slack is, and they actively fight the idea of using it.

Every single one of their complaints can be easily answered if they would just
listen for a second and use the notification and channel muting system
correctly, and if they were just a little bit more open to the idea of trying
new things.

------
traviswingo
I have it set to only notify me on direct messages or mentions for all
channels. It's significantly reduced the number of distractions on a daily
basis.

~~~
twobyfour
This. Also, I've muted all channels that I read to generally stay abreast of
what's going on in the company but rarely to never need to actively
participate in. And #random.

If you (or you and a group of allies) have the ability to influence your
company's Slack culture, the following can help.

1) No one should ever @channel unless they absolutely positively need
everybody's attention immediately that very moment. "The website is down! All
hands on deck!" "There's a rabid raccoon loose in the office! Evacuate!" @here
is slightly less awful but should still be used sparingly.

2) If you need someone's attention, @mention them. If you do require a group's
attention, @here the appropriate channel. If you do this consistently, people
can disable notifications for non-mentions and assume that any channel that
has unreads but no mentions may be read at their leisure - instead of having
to constantly keep up with dozens of conversations.

3) Use and teach people to use highlight words so they can get notifications
of conversation topics that require their presence, and ignore other unread
channels.

4) Set aside a channel or two for global or large-group announcements that
aren't necessarily urgent. "We're ordering t-shirts. Tell the office manager
what size you want." "Our phone system has a scheduled outage next Tuesday
from 2-4pm."

5) The larger your organization and the busier your Slack, the more granular
you need your channels to be. For instance, in a company of 5-10, you might
have a single channel for all discussions of product, and another for sales,
marketing, and partnerships. In a larger company you'll need to separate out
channels for client vs server engineering; for engineering vs design; for
engineering and design vs QA, and more. Don't make your designers try to
filter out what content is relevant for them in a combined design and
engineering channel or force your QA folks to ignore a whole bunch of
technobabble in order to find the discussions that are relevant to them. Don't
be afraid to break out project-specific channels too. If a conversation
crosses boundaries, only then bring it to a more general channel.

------
pesfandiar
Turn off all notifications, and let everyone else know that Slack is not the
way to reach you if there's an urgent need.

Unless, of course, it's your employer's policy to be promptly responsive on
Slack, in which case I'd try to change that or consider other jobs if you're
required to be constantly "on-call".

------
intermittently
I'm finding this more and more during my off hours. I wish there was a way to
opt out of all @channel announcements on my phone app and still get
notifications for when someone tags me directly (when I'm actually needed).

Probably not a helpful answer to your question, but I feel your pain, at any
rate.

~~~
user5994461
Did you install slack on your phone? Never install slack on your phone.

Uninstall slack from your phone. It's a matter of life or death and I am not
even kidding.

~~~
gm
Unfortunately, I'm coming to realize what you say is true. Now that I think
about it, there is NO issue that negatively affects my work/life balance more
than having Slack installed on my phone.

~~~
user5994461
Great. Now uninstall it before your wife divorce you.

------
firelinks
I would recommend switching from Slack to Skrumble
([http://www.skrumble.com](http://www.skrumble.com)). Skrumble provides a lot
more features that slack and conversations can be topic based rather than
channel based.

------
alexozer
Try Twist: [https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-
te...](https://blog.doist.com/why-were-betting-against-real-time-team-
messaging-521804a3da09)

~~~
hfourm
Looks cool although I think the article is overblowing the negatives of Slack-
esque communication and underselling the benefits. Especially considering he
was highlighting more about communication issues his team is facing that
probably could have been addressed without switching tools.

~~~
ezrast
There is no communication issue that cannot be addressed with Slack, because
Slack imposes almost no structure on its users. That doesn't mean you want to
use it for issue tracking. I think of Slack as UDP for humans - it's very
powerful, but it's something you have to _make_ work. If a higher-level
communication protocol already exists that fits your needs, might as well use
it.

------
ErikVandeWater
Kill everyone who messages you.

Or just turn off notification sounds and popups. Your choice.

------
askafriend
CMD + Q.

Try it sometime. It's an effective shortcut.

~~~
gm
Snarky answer does not take mobile devices into account.

~~~
askafriend
Turn off all Slack notifications for mobile and make it a "Pull" interaction
with the service vs. a "Push" interaction.

It's what I do with a lot of services these days. I'm selective about what
services can actually push to me.

Examples of services that are important enough to push to me include iMessage
(large group chats muted), Uber/UberEats, Lyft, Instacart, etc. Basically
notifications that are immediately actionable or important in the moment. Lots
of delivery services fall into this category.

------
iLemming
if you're on OSX you can install an app called Muzzle. it silences all
notifications

~~~
rouzbeh84
Or you can do this in the SysPref => Notifications tab

~~~
lolsal
You can option-click the notifications menu to enable DND for the rest of the
day.

