Talking, Fast & Slow
This isn’t a breakup note.
We aren’t ready to ditch Slack. Not yet. But drastic measures aren’t even on the table without at least a little motivation, and the truth is that we’re getting there.
As much value as we get from Slack as a watercooler, clipboard, and situation room, the stream of pings and notifications throughout the day are an unending source of distraction. Everyone on our team benefits from long, uninterrupted blocks of focused work. These windows are fleeting at the best of times—and with constant intrusions into our mental airspace, nearly impossible to find.
Then there’s discovery. One of our goals in using Slack is to keep our discussions out in the open, no matter where or when team members are working. It's a nice idea, but all those messages flying around make it a full-time job just to keep up. And if you missed the moment, forget it. Unless someone hammered a conversation to your inbox with a timely @-mention, chances are that it’s gone forever.
Search won’t help you if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
Know what’s less distracting? Talking slowly. Wikis. E-mails. Comment threads across the many apps we use in our day-to-day work.
Interestingly, the higher barriers of less-synchronous channels encourage ideas and context to co-mingle more than in free-flowing chat. n-deep reply-alls (never mind usergroup digests and mailing lists) will never be the last word in discoverability—but the bar is pretty low, and subject lines go a long way.
But we’re pulling up short of the cliff. We’re not breaking up with Slack, at least not yet, and we’re doing our best to make it work. That means:
- Signing out of Slack for multi-hour, focused working sessions
- Working together to increase the value of the messages we do send
- Closing threads
- Avoiding DMs
- Cross-linking everything we possibly can
Still, the conversation’s starting. If longer, slower, more thoughtful communication gets information to the people that need it (while sparing them the cheerful tones of a knock brush landing), we’ll be back to email before we know it.