Slack is a fantastic tool for collaboration and is packed with features. But with great power comes great⦠noise!
Constant notifications can interrupt your flow and derail your workday. That's why it's crucial to leverage Slack's built-in features to help you manage communication better, reduce context switching, and stay organized.
As hundreds of channels get created in a Slack workspace, it becomes difficult for anyone to discover the right channel to post in.
Organize channels around teams or projects and give them simple and intuitive names. This helps everyone to search for the relevant channel even if they may not be part of those channels.
Many times you get added to a channel for a one-off discussion but post that you are not required to be active on that channel. Some channels, like #general or #random, can get spammy with non-essential chatter. If you're not active in a channel, it can become a source of distractions.
If you rely on thread notifications to go over all the unread messages, it would involve jumping between unrelated conversations. This can be a huge time waster as you are constantly switching context.
Group related channels into sections so you can review messages in one go without switching contexts. Additionally, apply filters to view channels with unread messages only.
In a channel, multiple people might have conversations on multiple topics at the same time. This can create confusion on following conversations related to a particular topic.
Start a thread for any discussion that will have more than two replies. Threads keep channels clean, making it easier to follow ongoing conversations.
If you're discussing the new website design in #product, start a thread to avoid distracting others.
Project conversations can spread out over days or even weeks, making it hard to track task progress.
Use threads to manage tasks, and track progress with emojis or status updates.
Use a thread for "Q3 Roadmap β Owner: Alice" and mark tasks with as they're completed.
It's quite common to create team or project-related Slack Groups to broadcast messages. Tagging large groups leads to a lack of accountability, as people think someone else will take action.
You are part of a channel created for an important project. You are part of the project so you need to be in the channel. However, given the current stage of the project, majority messages may not be Action Items or even FYI for you.
Instead of getting notified of every message on the channel, set up keyword-based notifications instead. That way, only the most important messages pull you away from your work.
If you're part of the Sales team, set up a notification for terms like "launch date" to stay informed without seeing every message.
You may have ideas or updates outside of working hours but don't want to disturb others outside of working timezones.
Schedule messages for the next workday using Slack's scheduling feature.
Sarah from customer support schedules her messages for 9 AM instead of sending them during her late-night shifts. This way, she respects her team's working hours without forgetting important updates.
Most of your work-related conversations are taking place in Slack whereas your project management is done in a separate app.
Most of your work-related communication might happen on Slack but there are many other applications you use for your daily work which generate their messages. For example, as an engineer, you will have review comments on JIRA tickets, PR comments on GitHub and comments in your tech spec on Google docs. This creates the problem of having communication-related to a task spread across multiple tools.
Excessive back-and-forth can lead to unnecessary notifications and delays in responses.
Siloed conversations can lead to repetitive updates and leave others uninformed.
Unchecked Slack notifications outside working hours can disturb your personal time, especially if you're part of a global team.
Without proper configuration, Slack can overwhelm you with unnecessary notifications.
Notifications create interruptions. This interferes with your current flow of thoughts and creates stress. The constant interruption can overwhelm you.
When someone uses @channel in a large channel
Use @channel sparingly. Consider if everyone really needs to be notified.
Slack doesn't have to be a source of constant distraction. By taking control of its powerful features, you can transform it into a tool that works for you, not against you.
From smart channel organization and thoughtful notifications to using threads and integrations effectively, these small changes can have a big impact on your productivity.
By the way, if you have any thoughts or feedback after reading this guide, please share it with us at hey@zivy.app
Your feedback would be incredibly helpful as we continue refining our approach to make this guide even better for professionals like yours.