As a content marketer, I read blogs quite often. I don’t mean once a day, I mean like somehow I replaced my Facebook addiction circa-2011 and spend far too much time on Medium and Hackernews. I tend to convince myself that it’s “research” or tangentially useful, but really, all I’ve done is swap a blue F for a green M.
There’s an incredibly diverse range of time sucks out there and what’s worse is that half of them are close enough to real work that you can avoid the guilt you might get from watching Youtube. No one blinks an eye when you spend an hour in your email, but that’s not what you had to do today! Getting granular stuff done is hard, that’s something we’ve known since Paul Graham wrote the startup bible.
To be certain, it isn’t easy to tear yourself away from that notification bubble, the banter in #random, or an article about the Paypal mafia. Websites are designed so that it’s not easy to quickly check something, or spend 5 minutes and easily close the tab. Slack isn’t explicitly optimized to keep you there, but it provides pretty extensive dopamine hits as well, and is superb at engrossing your mind in the many threads of conversation. And even if Slack is designed that way, it’s not a bad thing — that’s why it works!
The problem is that you still need to use email, Slack, and even Facebook. So how can you use these tools, access the functionality you need, and turn 20 minutes into 20 seconds?
I wish I had a single answer, truly I do. For now though, these hacks might help.
1. Onetab
It was a single innocent article, but while reading it, you see several more that look interesting, and open them in new tabs. When you’ve finished the first, you devour to the second, but it also prompts you to open a few more. While you’re reading the third, you come across a term you aren’t familiar with and Google it.
It doesn’t matter what it started with, but now you have 10 tabs open. You know you should get back to work, but there’s this nagging sense of FOMO. The article looks really interesting and a new co-living startup has piqued your interest.
When you catch yourself in a wormhole, get out!
The solution to this is OneTab. Install the Chrome extension, collapse and saves all your tabs . You can intend to get around to them later, but I’ve found that even if I know I probably won’t, saving them makes it easier to drag my attention back to things that matter. It’s like hoarding, but with no consequences; I don’t have to deal with the emotional travesty of dropping that WSJ article forever and by closing the window and I can start working.
Onetab even has an option to collapse Tabs only on the left or right of your current one and it can be useful for actual research too.
2. Messenger > Facebook
While Facebook has a somewhat awkward relationship with millennials, Messenger is still an oft-used communication channel. Whether it’s friends abroad or a group chat, Messenger is the thread that binds me to Facebook.
So a big shout-out to Zucks for letting me visit it without the siren-call of the Newsfeed clawing for my attention. If that’s not your style, there are extensions to block the Newsfeed, but I’ve found they’re pretty RAM-heavy.
And since last June, you can use messenger without having a Facebook account so if you’re hopelessly running at an attention deficit, make a new account and add only the people you need to talk to. Bottomline: newsfeed is for nubes.
3. Slack Starred Chats and Channels
If you aren’t using Slack reminders, start. It’s a super easy way to stay on top of requests and tasks without losing track of what you’re doing. Ironically, given when the features came out, I used reminders way before stars. I guess I never saw the point or tried them, but starring messages has become a lifesaver for when I need to refer to something later.
Slack’s search is robust and easy to navigate, but starring things means I don’t have to make a mental note of keywords I can search for later or copy things into my conversation with Slackbot. It’s like pinning something, but just for you!
4. Slack Make use of the notification settings.
You probably won’t get it right on the first try and as conversations (and your workload) wax and wane, you’ll have to tweak them, but these settings are the difference between Slack being helpful and a distraction. This article from Slack goes into more detail.
5. Hide Unread Count in Gmail
Ever get distracted mid-email because you see the number of things in your inbox increase, and click to see what showed up? Or the number changed in your mail tab that’s always open and it caught your eye?
There are solutions to both of these ungodly horrors.
The first is a little tricky. There used to be a Google labs feature that would fuzz out the number of unread emails, but it seems to have been discontinued in 2012. I haven’t tried it yet, but Minimalist for Everything has glowing reviews and a testimonial from a former Google labs user.
You could also use a tool called Stylish, which let’s you override the CSS and change the way websites look. Don’t be off-put if you’re non-technical, there are pre-made styles and this one will make the inbox entry go away.
One last workaround, which I realize is far from revolutionary, is to organize your inbox with filters and labels. While it might seem like an ominous chore, the UI is pleasantly easy to navigate and it took me 20 minutes to redirect most of the useless emails to an Updates tab. For the most part, if I’m in my email for good reason, and something makes it through the filters to my inbox, there’s a good chance it won’t be detrimental to check it.
The second problem, that pesky, distracting tab, has a much simpler solution. If your use Chrome, a pinning your tab will hide the unread count so only the Gmail icon is visible on the tab. To pin a tab in Chrome, right-click on it and click the “Pin tab” option.
5. Gmail compose from a new tab
If you have Gmail set up as your default mail handler, then typing mailto:email@address.com will open up a gmail compose window, nowhere near your inbox. Use this guide or an extension to do change those settings.
Still, mailto: is long and has a symbol in it, you can make this even easier! Its surprisingly simple to add a custom search engine (I even have one for Thesaurus.com). In Chrome, right-click the search bar and clicking Edit search engines… For other browsers, Google [your browser] quicksearch, then proceed.
Make a new search engine with the keyword comp (or whatever you choose) and the url https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=new . Now if you need to write a message, you can go straight to a compose window and bypass your inbox. Just open a new tab, type comp and then enter.
The Moral of the Story
If you’re not processing your inbox, stay away. If you don’t want to chat in Slack, change the notifications. If you’re not intending to scroll through your newsfeed, don’t go near it.
Attention is valuable. Use it for what matters.
