I see this complaint a lot, and I'm very sensitive to dopamine addiction myself so perhaps a few of my tips can help someone else make Slack less frustrating:
1. use /mute judiciously. especially on the main chats. only unmute important "#500" style channels. People immediately learn to @you when relevant.
2. disable notifications for everything on mobile: DMs, @here, @channel, @yourname, anything. No notifications whatsoever.
3. Put "Notifications disabled -- in case of emergency, please call me: <phone nr here>" in your status. I've had one person call me ever and it was completely justified. He saw the status, called me and said, "sorry I'm calling but it's an emergency and your status said to call." Great.
4. Disable all notifications on your desktop app, as well. On Mac OS X, don't even have the red app button show up for unread messages. Just check Slack once an hour (or what you want) and deal with any DMs / @mentions / outstanding chat. In reality, you'll automatically check whenever you have mental downtime, or during a conversation. This just allows you to stay in the zone when you are.
This has significantly reduced my Slack-stress. I enjoy it far better now, on my terms.
Most importantly: if someone is frustrated by your poor response time, explain! "I'm very bad with distractions, I need this to cope. If it's an emergency, please call :)". People are good people, they understand.
1. use /mute judiciously. especially on the main chats. only unmute important "#500" style channels. People immediately learn to @you when relevant.
2. disable notifications for everything on mobile: DMs, @here, @channel, @yourname, anything. No notifications whatsoever.
3. Put "Notifications disabled -- in case of emergency, please call me: <phone nr here>" in your status. I've had one person call me ever and it was completely justified. He saw the status, called me and said, "sorry I'm calling but it's an emergency and your status said to call." Great.
4. Disable all notifications on your desktop app, as well. On Mac OS X, don't even have the red app button show up for unread messages. Just check Slack once an hour (or what you want) and deal with any DMs / @mentions / outstanding chat. In reality, you'll automatically check whenever you have mental downtime, or during a conversation. This just allows you to stay in the zone when you are.
This has significantly reduced my Slack-stress. I enjoy it far better now, on my terms.
Most importantly: if someone is frustrated by your poor response time, explain! "I'm very bad with distractions, I need this to cope. If it's an emergency, please call :)". People are good people, they understand.
I hope this helps anyone :)