Picture this…you are heads down, in a groove, cranking out your to do list. Tss Tss Tss: Slack ping. Microsoft Chime: Teams Message. Enter the distraction. While we may be working in an increasingly remote world, we are still somehow facing the same amount(if not more) of distractions that we face in the office. While many of these distractions are just a matter of course of how we do business, one of the major contributors to interrupted work and therefore incredibly expensive context switching are the chat or messaging tools.
Our working relationship with these tools is complex. On the one hand, we rely on them for communication, collaboration, problem solving etc etc etc. That being said, they are also incredibly intrusive interruptions to any “rhythm” we may be striving to achieve at work. So how do we solve this paradox? Here are some concrete ways to leverage these messaging tools with guardrails so that they don’t act as a constant barrier to flow state and productivity.
Saying “I’m Not Available”
Use the “away” feature available in Slack.
Customize using icons to say “I’m heads down” or “I’m going for a walk”.
Add a time when you will be returning so that others know when would be a good time to reach out.
SILENCE NOTIFICATIONS when you do this!
Set standard Heads Down time for the whole team. During this time, all team members refrain from sending messages to one another.
Assign one team member to manage any channels that are externally facing each week, this way only one person at a time has to deal with the “noise” of messages.
This is especially helpful for teams who provide tier one support and always need to be reachable.
Customize notification settings to control how often you're alerted about new messages. Use "Do Not Disturb" mode when you need focused work time.
Organizing Content
Create dedicated channels with specific purposes to allow for selective notifications depending on the topic.
As an example, perhaps the production support channel notifications are always on but the recipe sharing or water cooler channel is silenced.
Use different channels for projects or teams or topics. For example, have a channel especially for testing new features and all of the communications that go with that exercise.
Create norms for what content gets “pinned” to the channel so that important information for the team is always readily available.
Within each channel, use threads to keep conversations organized
Threads allow you to reply to a specific message, keeping discussions coherent and easy to follow. Leverage nesting capability to organize discussions by topic or issue.
In Microsoft Teams this feature is called “Conversations”.
Use reaction emojis to quickly acknowledge messages without needing to write a response.
This can indicate that you've seen the message and understand its content.
Use formatting tools like bullet points, lists, and headings to make your messages more organized and easily scannable.
This helps recipients quickly understand the main points of your message.
Communicating with “Heads Down” Colleagues
Schedule messages to send at a later point in time.
This is useful for writing messages during your productive hours and having them delivered when your teammates are active.
Encourage respect for response times.
Establish norms within your team that acknowledge and respect varying response times.
Make it clear that immediate responses are not always expected in asynchronous communication.
Implement guidelines for how to indicate the urgency of a communication.
For example, a norm could be that emergencies are NOT communicated over Slack or Teams, that way everyone knows that if a message comes through during heads down time, it isn’t urgent, because emergencies are dealt with via a phone call (or some other communication forum).
Emojis reactions can be leveraged to address less urgent messages and indicate the sender’s preferred turnaround time. The reaction selected doesn’t really matter as long as everyone knows what each one means.
Messages that need to be answered same day can have an emoji reaction of a calendar.
Messages that need to be answered in a day or two can have a clock.
Share documents or files with plenty of time built in for feedback and collaboration
Use Slack's file-sharing capabilities to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. This way, team members can review the content at their own pace and provide feedback asynchronously.
In teams, files can be uploaded to a channel for storage. Creating a folder specifically for feedback or revision prior to a final draft could be uploaded ahead of the deadline.
