Ah Slack… the beast that cannot be tamed. If you thought email was bad, then wait until you start using Slack. More messages, more pings, and more channels. Some have declared bankruptcy, others live in a perpetual anxiety state of an unread red bubble, and then there are a few who pull all-nighters trying to read everything.
What if there was another way?
For a while I struggled with Slack - the sheer volume of messages was impossible to stay on top of. At the same time, it was somewhat addictive. Slack felt like work, and if you wanted you could spend an endless amount of time there. But as I was involved in more and more projects, it became impossible to keep track of everything and to filter the signal from the noise.
After many iterations and with the most recent Slack update, I came to a system that mostly works for me, I thought I'd share it out in case others find it valuable.
Principles
First principles:
Spend as little time in Slack as necessary to move work forward and unblock others
Relatedly, optimize for focus and deep work when outside of Slack
Optimize for responsiveness in high signal channels
Leverage low signal channels for context and visibility
Be okay letting some things slip in favor of being on top of the important things
The system
After some setup, the end output of this is that you will have:
Two inboxes, one for unread channels, and one for unread threads
Be able to quickly skim these inboxes without marking messages as read
Be able to fully disconnect from Slack when not in it
Step 1: Sort your sidebar
There are many different approaches here and those in more channels will need more sorting. The most important however is to:
Move DMs to the top of your sidebar, and set "show and sort" to "Unreads Only"
Create a new section called "Priority". This will be a living section, where you move all of your important channels. Think projects you are driving, any channels you have with your manager(s), potentially team channels, and other channels that you need to be on top of.
I personally have a few other sections (basically a more granular priority section), but beyond the two above is personal preference (mine are: DMs, Priority, Team Channels, Manager Channels, Project Channels, X-Team Collab Channels, Important Customer Channels, and everything else).
Step 2: Enable "Unreads"
This is the most important feature in Slack for one's sanity. Find it in Preferences -> Home -> Unreads. Turn it on.
Next, go to the Unreads tab and change the sorting. Update it to "Sorted like your sidebar"
Boom! You now have an inbox that is sorted by priority order. The beautiful thing about this is you can quickly skim through channels - get to the most important ones asap and keep those clear - and ignore the rest until you have time to work through them all.
The other powerful thing about Unreads is that it allows you to explicitly "mark as read" - this lets you catch up on a channel even before you don't have time to respond, and circle back when you have some more time to think.
Step 3: Managing Threads
Unfortunately, unreads doesn't support "threads". However, thanks to the new Slack update, there is now an inbox for threads!
You can find it in the new "Activity" tab. Toggle "unreads" in the top right corner. Boom! You now have an inbox that you can again skim through and explicitly mark as read when you need to.
Unfortunately it can't be sorted in sidebar order, and the UI is not quite as nice as the "Unreads" channel section. But it is far superior to the old Slack and gives a true inbox for messages in "threads" - versus the chaos that is the "Threads" tab in the sidebar.
Step 4: Cleaning up notifications for peace of mind
Now that you have two inboxes and a way to make sure you get to the most important messages quickly, you can effectively kill notifications.
This sounds a bit radical - but hear me out - notifications do nothing except add to your stress level. They pop up while you're in a meeting and can't talk, they alert you when you're trying to be heads down and get something done - they break your flow state. Notifications are bad in almost all cases. You're checking Slack every 30 minutes already, do you really need a notification to remind you to check it again?
So get rid of them. I personally recommend disabling all notifications in Apple settings for Slack, including badges.
Now that you've disabled notifications, you need to make sure you are still checking Slack regularly. For me and many others, there is probably no extra step needed. Odds are you are in Slack all the time already. But if you have trouble checking, then add a calendar block a few times per day to check slack when logging on, after lunch, and before logging off.
As a side note - if you are in a role where you are actively on call then you should enable Slack notifications - and most importantly make sure your pager system is set up, because that's how folks will get your attention without Slack notifications.
Putting it all together
With the setup above, the experience of using Slack becomes much more pleasant. Here's how I personally use it:
I only use the 2 inboxes - Unreads and Activity. I never go to channels directly unless I'm looking for a past message or am sending a message.
I check Slack regularly throughout the day, and always try to keep my Priority channels Unreads inbox cleared out.
If I get a DM or message in one of my Priority channels, I'll make sure to follow up on it as soon as I can
With that said, once I notice I've gotten through my Priority and Team channels in Unreads, I simply stop reading. I know that everything below that point is going to be something that's not urgent due to the sidebar sorting.
I do the same thing with my Notifications Inbox, checking it regularly throughout the day, and clearing the high urgency threads
Generally I will try to clear out my full Unreads inbox a couple of times per week. Usually Wednesday and Fridays before logging off.
This cadence changes, but I find doing this at least a couple of times a week is enough to stay on top of the important things without getting overwhelmed. Sometime if I have extra time I'll do it more frequently.
I end up discovering a lot of interesting things going on around the company through these "clear outs". So I personally end up staying in many channels.
As soon as I am added to a channel that I know I need to stay on top of, I move it to my Priority section. I keep this section cleaned up, and move things out once they are no longer high urgency.
Hopefully this somewhat helps tame Slack, and if you have other ideas, I'm all ears!
Other notes and miscellaneous things
I don't use channel muting at all, I just leave channels. I don't like that you don't get any notification if you are in a muted channel and someone tags you. It feels like something will fall through the cracks. I'd rather just leave and then the person trying to tag you will get a notification alerting them that you're not in the channel.
I use the mobile app, but others have deleted it. Debating deleting it as well, but I think it's nice for extremely urgent situations. I have noticed that most of the time the mobile app just adds stress, and rarely do I respond to messages (normally I just read them and mark them as unread for when I'm back at the computer).
I used to use the "save" feature, but found that I would just forget about it and those messages would disappear forever. Now if there is something that requires deeper thought (e.g. reading a design document) I will add that to my todo list outside of Slack and mark the message as read (I'll include a link to the message in my todos if necessary).