I love Slack. And I also hate it.
It’s definitely better than any alternative (yes, I’ve had the misfortune to use Microsoft Teams).
Still, we spend an average of 2 hours a day on Slack. A big percentage of that time is spent scrolling, rereading the same messages, and trying to keep up with countless channels and threads (seriously, why isn’t there an easy way to browse threads??).
This creates an endless loop:
People don’t get the answers they need
They schedule meetings
Which leaves us even less time to respond on Slack
Async communication is hard, I don’t think it’s a ‘solvable’ problem - there will always be friction.
I believe that not enough Engineering Managers spend time on optimizing their async communication environments.
Today, I hope to cover simple tips on how I try to use Slack more effectively, hopefully saving you tens of hours a year (and reducing your mental load).
If you use another tool - try to find similar tricks!
1. Unreads conversations only
A good first step is to reduce the noise. In every category (like channels/direct messages), you can choose to see only the unread channels by clicking the 3 dots and tweaking this setting:
The upside: less scrolling time, and less noise on the screen. You can clearly see where you have unread messages.
There’s also no real downside - you can easily access the channels by clicking the 3 dots, or pressing ctrl + k and searching for the channel name.
2. Categories
The next step is to categorize your channels and conversations by groups. My recommendation is to create a group for the people you talk to on a day-to-day basis, and to group your channels based on reading priority (you’ll see in the next section why it’s useful).
You can of course choose a different way - the point though is to choose something that is useful, not just makes sense. If you group the channels by topics - does it help you operate better?
Note that you can also move apps and external categories (and not just leave them in the default groups!). For example, I want to see GitHub notifications in the read-immediately group (to not be a blocker for PRs). For other external apps, I’ll user read-daily or even read-weekly.
3. Mute/unmute groups
Every channel has a different reading cadence.
For example, alerts: if you are a hotfixer, you need to read them ASAP. If not, you might want to read them weekly to stay in touch. Same for project-related channels: if it’s a project you are leading, you might want to read it immediately (to unblock someone else). If it’s more of an FYI, a daily or even weekly reading is enough.
The huge power of muting a group is that you can unmute it, and have it returned to the exact same place:
I’m mainly using this method for read-weekly. Every Friday, I have a scheduled 15-minute meeting to browse them. I unmute, read them, and mute again.
This way I don’t even think about them for most of the week.
4. Escape from threads
Someone tagged you in a noisy thread and it keeps distracting you? You can turn of the notifications:
5. Message reminders
The problem with keeping messages ‘unread’ is that it can become very confusing. Additional messages might be written in the same conversation, causing the original message to be ‘lost’. Also, it creates mental noise. Slack has a powerful ‘remind me’ feature (by clicking the 3 dots on a message):
I like to set reminders for next day 9am for non-urgent messages - letting me answer them quietly with the morning coffee.
6. /remind
Let’s imagine you worked on something, and suddenly remembered you wanted to send a message to someone. You can write in any slack channel (nobody will see it):
“/remind me to send a message to Jack tomorrow at 12:00”.
You can also send a reminder in a specific channel (by default, if you don’t add one, it’ll send the reminder to you):
“/remind #channel-name to go over the messages on Wednesday morning”
The format is:
/remind [#channel] “[what]” [when]
It’s pretty robust, understanding human language pretty well.
7. Edit all sections
To start organizing your Slack, the easiest way is to enter ‘edit mode’, by clicking ‘edit all sections’:
You can organize everything in less than 15 minutes :)
Final words
As managers, Slack is our main tool to get things done. Most of us spend more time in Slack than in our IDEs.
I believe it’s worth being intentional about it - spending the time to constantly improve your processes. Those small changes accumlate benefit throughout the years.
Discover weekly
I’m Going to Dig a Hole - beautiful piece on supporting others without judgment.
Stop Asking for a Mentor and You’re interviewing Backwards by . I first found his newsletter after reading ‘That Will Never Work’ (his view on founding Netflix), and I really enjoy his newsletter!
Growth Is Now a Trust Problem by . I believe EMs will get closer and closer to the product (and growth) side - and Elena’s writing is a terrific resource on it.
