In Arkency we switched to Slack from IRC 2 years ago. We immediately felt in love with it. It was just like an IRC, but with a lot of things just out of a box.

We started to use it more and more heavily. Lack of threading led us to create over 200 channels. Most of them are just a contextual channels for a bigger project. It encouraged us to communicate even more.

Yet, I noticed the big problem I had with Slack. I made a habit of checking it over for new messages. We got a lot of automation and notifications from external services. There is almost always something happening on the Slack.

It is easy to dive into messages stream for 10 minutes when getting there only to respond to a single mention.

Recently I read a convincing article about the bad sides of group chats by Jason Fried. He pointed out 17 reasons why they may lead to causing ineffectiveness and anxiety. The main point I got from it: it should be ok for you to be unavailable.

I reflected a bit about this in the context of our organisation. Being async is actually a core of Arkency. We work remotely, most of us in different times of day (I do the most of my work at night). This is a quite unique working style, which we even described in our book Async Remote.

There are no expectations of me being in-sync, available all the time. And probably there is no need for you neither.

It made me understand it is a problem of self-control. It’s me, who made a habit of answering ASAP on every request and being constantly available. I researched a bit, made a bit of thinking and got some ideas on how to improve the situation and break the habits.

Of course, it does not mean, I can go offline for an entire work-day without notice. I tend to get onto Slack once in a while. It is not about getting rid of group chats.

Reducing distractions from apps like Slack

I chose Slack as a subject of this blog post. It was the biggest source of my distractions, so I targeted it as a priority.

But, the tips I want to give you are applicable to most apps you may want to use. I applied the same rules to Skype, Flowdock and mail client.

Here are 3 things I applied recently to my working routine to get more focused work.

1. Remove notifications and badges

Most modern communication tools have notifications. This can be distracting when you are working on something that requires focus. This is true especially for us, software developers.

I have been reducing the number of notifications from all apps for few years. Yet, I did never go all-in. If someone mentioned me on Slack, I got notified. This time, I just turned off all notifications.

Red evil eye of FOMO

But that’s not all. Do you remember that evil red-eye showing you that there is something new?

It is some other kind of notification. I think it is much worse than a standard notification pop-up. It sits in the back of your head, reminding you about new things being there. You remember it is here. Or you get reminded about it every time you see task switcher or application dock. It is an unnecessary mental clutter.

On OS X, there is a way to turn off all kinds of notifications. Just go to Preferences -> Notifications.

Other systems usually have its own notification center. You also should be able to control the notifications from the app sending it.

Some apps (like Slack) also have options to regulate that inside the application. You can set it to inform you only on when some phrase occurs in someone’s message.