This is just a reminder of how really different people are. There are folks who really do want their Slack to be blowing up all the time, while I cannot imagine anything more hellish and productivity-destroying.

If nothing were in Slack all week, I’d love it. That’d never happen, but it’s a damn beautiful dream. When someone messages me in Slack I delay responding for as long as possible (sometimes even if it’s my boss) as I hate that useless chatter channel so much. Any other medium to contact me is better and more trackable. Slack is a huge productivity destroyer and concentration conflagrator.

I’d bet $100K (if there were any definitive way to prove it) that one reason productivity numbers have stagnated is due to use of Slack and other Slack-like tools. They are just a playground for extroverts who prevent others from getting work done.

Sometimes, I don’t respond to Slack messages for 2-3 days and then say, “Oh! You should’ve put a ticket in. My team would’ve taken care of it nearly immediately.” This has been working fairly well.