I’ve been using Slack for years. Like many, I made the transition to Slack from another group messaging app after hearing countless recommendations from others. The affinity was instant. Slack has a variety of features I enjoy, including link unfurling, file sharing, app integrations, painless channel management, cross-platform support, and the friendly built-in assistant, Slackbot.

Last year I took things to the next level: I joined the developer program and built my first bot. In the process, I needed a place to test my bot before submitting it for approval, so I set up my own Slack team. I used to test the two apps I ended up developing, Emojify and DotCom, and then moved on.

Shortly after that, I joined Hopscotch as a product manager. They were already on Slack, which was a positive for me. As the product manager, I had Slack open all the time, and I got into the habit of using it for a lot of functions, like getting updates on activity from our task-tracking software and setting reminders for myself with Slackbot. I even set up a channel that could be used to file bug reports with just a single message through a custom integration with Zapier. Eventually I realized that Slack has excellent use cases even outside of the group context. I ended up dusting off my personal Slack “team” and have been using it ever since. What follows is a rundown of how I use it. After reading it, you might be compelled to set up your own personal Slack “team” and make it a part of your lifestyle too. Best of all, for a single user using no more than 10 apps, it’s free, and you can get it on just about any device you use.

On that note, I use the Mac app. I know some people who refuse to install the app and prefer to use it in the browser, but I like the way it integrates with OS notifications and you can set it up to launch whenever you log in. I also have a habit of having way too many tabs open, so it’s just better for me to have a complex app like Slack separate from my browser “mess.” I also have it installed on my iPhone, and sometimes I use it for quick & dirty file transfers from my iPhone to my Macbook. I find it easier than going through Dropbox or Airdrop, because I can just open Slack and tap the upload button at the bottom of the screen. Plus, I really like the “Use Last Photo Taken” option which saves me the trouble of opening the unwieldy camera-picker interface when I just want to transfer the last screenshot I took.

Okay, on to the features…

Slackbot

Slackbot is an under-appreciated (in my opinion) virtual AI assistant in Slack. One feature I use it for is setting reminders for myself. The great thing about it is it understands natural language — you can just type “Remind me to email Claudia in 1 hour” or “Remind me to buy milk tomorrow” and it will parse the task and the time to create a reminder. Then, when you get the reminder, if you need to punt on it you can set it to remind you again in 15 minutes, 1 hour, or the next day.

Another cool feature is you can set up custom responses. For fun, I added all the classic Magic 8-ball responses for the input phrase “8ball.” Now I can throw caution to the wind and let a random number generator decide my fate whenever I want.

Your Notepad

You can use your own direct message “channel” to save notes. Obviously on a private solo “team,” any channel can be a private notes channel, but I figured I would point this feature out since many users don’t take advantage of it even in group settings. Not only can you send yourself standard messages, but you can also save links, files, code snippets, and even complete posts with a rich-text editor that you can go back to and edit at any time. Plus, you can use it as a watch-or-listen-later app since any links from sites like Youtube or Soundcloud will unfurl with an embedded player. Essentially you have a rich, easy-to-use link-saving-and-searching interface at your disposal. Slack can become your go-to drafting pad as well as a stream-of-consciousness note-taking area with full search. And when it comes to taking notes, it’s a lot simpler than an app like the iPhone Notes app, which requires you to create separate note “files” to store notes.

Bots & Apps

Yala! — Yala is a smart bot that analyzes your social network feed to figure out when is the best time for you to post on social networks. Basically, you can chat with Yala to compose a social media post and it will determine what time is best to post it and handle everything for you so it will get the most attention.

All I have to do is click “Perfectly time it” and Yala will publish this for me at 1:41 pm, when I’m likely to get the most visibility from my Twitter followers. This is great for me since I hate tweeting stuff that never gets noticed!

Kittybot by Product Hunt — This Product Hunt bot is like a smart notifier that shows me products I might like from my interest groups. All I had to do was tell it what I’m into (Developer Tools, Design Tools, User Experience, Artificial Intelligence) and now I get notifications with cool products that have been submitted recently in those categories. It’s a lot better than trying to sift through the large volume of products being submitted to PH on any given day, and I tend to find things I wouldn’t have found otherwise thanks to Kittybot.

to-do bot — I’m not much for to-do lists. In the past I have usually relied on pen & paper or an email thread that I send to myself with rough notes on what I need to get done. As much as I love task trackers, I’m not really interested in running my own JIRA/Asana/Pivotal/Trello/etc tracker, and I’ve never been able to get into the habit of using a dedicated to-do app. But I was experimenting with to-do bot while I was at Hopscotch and I found the interface was kind of appealing for someone who is already in Slack a lot. All I have to do is type /todo followed by the text I want to log and to-do bot will track it for me. I can also add a due date with natural language, like “/todo Make dinner by 5pm” and to-do will parse it neatly.

Then, at any time I can send to-do bot the simple command “/todo list” to see all my pending tasks. Finally, I can type “/todo done [task ID]” to mark it complete, and I’ll get a nice bit of feedback to celebrate.

I don’t usually need this level of granularity for my to-do list, but in those rare situations when I want to get really serious about getting word done, this app has the right amount of tedium.

Mailbot — Mailbot notifies me about new emails. I use Mailbot for this because I don’t like to look at my email inbox all day, but I feel obligated to respond to important messages quickly. If I have my email inbox open, I’m going to feel obligated to either respond to or delete any message that comes in and will end up spending a lot time on this when I should be doing other things. If I’m just getting notifications of new messages elsewhere, I can decide whether it really necessitates responding immediately or if it can wait. Therefore, using a Slack integration, I can be certain I won’t miss any important emails without actually getting derailed because of all the unimportant emails I receive!

Plus, Mailbot allows me to switch between getting notifications for all new emails or just the ones that Gmail tags “Important,” which is usually reliable for making sure I see the emails that are actually, well, important!

Twitter — I had to install the Twitter app. It offers the same benefit I get from Mailbot, in that it keeps me from looking at Twitter all day. With the Twitter app I can track replies I get on Twitter so I can respond in the moment and then get right back off of Twitter before I get carried away with reading the feed.

There are a bunch more useful apps that bring in all kinds of functionality and integrations — these are just the ones that I’ve made use of so far. What are your suggestions? Have you tried setting up and using your own private Slack team? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts!