Being great at Slack is about saying no

Slack opens up an organization and busts down information silos. This is a big shift. When discussions are available to all, it’s up to the end user to decide which conversations to be a part of. This is unlike e-mail, where users don’t get to choose the conversations that land in their inbox.

Slack moves communication from a tasting menu, where the discussions you need to be a part of land in your inbox, to a buffet where you can pick and choose which discussions to subscribe to.

Productive Slack usage is all about carefully deciding which conversations to participate in. Especially when first exploring Slack, there’s a temptation to subscribe to as many channels as possible. Users that subscribe to too many channels, find themselves spending the time they would use to do their actual job catching up on Slack.

Beyond exercising restraint when subscribing to channels, it’s important to prioritize conversations. Treating all Slack channels like they’re equally important can be a disaster. Slack, just like most things in a busy workday, requires a concerted triage effort.

Some channels and messages are more important and urgent than others. When users treat their channels equally, the more important conversations get lost in the noise of the less important ones.

It can be tempting to treat Slack like an inbox and shoot for “Slack Zero.” Reading every single message in every Slack room takes time. The users that get the most out of Slack understand that, unlike email, they don’t need to read every message.

The :key: to making Slack work for you

The secret to productive Slack usage is to rank your channels by importance and treat them accordingly. Smart executives interact with their most important channels completely differently from their least important ones.

By setting different expectations and notification settings for each channel users can cut down their time in Slack and increase their value to their teams. It’s worth the time to take a step back and rank your channels.

Star your high priority channels

When ranking channels, start by identifying the one or two channels that matter most. Figure out the high priority channels that are directly connected to your day-to-day work, the ones where you don’t want to miss a single message.

It’s prudent to star these high priority channels. Starred channels automatically show up at the top of your Slack channel list and make quickly scanning your messages much easier.

By starring the channels you actively participate in, you surface the high-value work and elevate it above the noise. It’s a simple action that takes just a few minutes, but makes a big difference when it comes to cutting down on distractions in Slack.

Skim tangential channels

Beyond your high priority channels, there are probably as many as a dozen lower priority channels with conversations tangential to your work. These conversations occasionally impact your life, but most of the time, they don’t have much to do with you.

Here’s where Slack diverges from email’s urgent attention paradigm. If you wait to read the messages in a lower priority channel, nothing bad will happen. You don’t need to be on-call. If something does require your attention, you can count on your coworkers to @mention you and pull you in.

Michael Lopp (also known as rands on the web) explained this well in a recent post:

My working and perhaps incorrect assumption in a Slack team is that if a piece of information needs to get to me, a qualified human will make sure I get it by either using the @name convention, sending me a DM, or creating a channel for us to have a longer running discussion of this essential information.

-Michael Lopp, VP Engineering Slack

Use discipline when dealing with lower priority channels. Try to catch up daily or even weekly. When you do catch up on these channels, don’t feel like you need to read every message. Your job is to skim for messages that could impact what you’re working on.

Mute fun channels

In addition to the channels that relate to your work, it’s important to be diligent about “fun” channels. Watercooler channels, lunch channels and other cultural channels don’t count as work. Just because dog gifs exist in a work tool, doesn’t mean they’re a productive use of your time.

To help resist the temptation to check these channels, it’s a good idea to mute them. This way, you won’t be distracted by unread message notifications. Don’t worry, if someone mentions you, you’ll still be notified.

It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to be in every channel you might need information from. Slack’s powerful search features make it easy to find the conversations you’re looking for, even when you’re not a part of the channel.

Wrapping up

The employees and organizations that get ahead in a Slack powered world will will exercise discipline.

Becoming great at Slack requires prioritizing the channels you subscribe to and exercising control around how often you decide to check them. While it’s tempting to subscribe to every channel that could be relevant, by having faith in search, you can narrow your scope down to a few high value channels. With those channels, decide which are most important and decide not to check the others constantly.

The time you spend in Slack is only productive if it helps you do your job more effectively. Using Slack just to participate in conversations may feel good, but it doesn’t help get more done.

This post is a part of a series on getting the most out of Slack. Next week, we’ll share the best way to avoid annoying your coworkers in Slack. If you’d like to hear more, follow us on Medium or subscribe to our email newsletter.