Ask HN: How do you deal with Slack, Discord, Teams, IRC, etc. | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with Slack, Discord, Teams, IRC, etc.

3 pointsw4rh4wk52 comments

Looking at my Discord client, there are about 10 to 20 servers I have join. Some of them are related to work, some dedicated to open-source projects, some are just Twitch streamer communities — you get the idea. There are active discussions in most of them going on, almost 24/7.

My question is: how do people keep up?

I do have notifications disabled as I don't like to be interrupted while working. Is it normal to just go through all channels of interest, scanning for important information every once in a while, or is there a trick to it?

So far I have been doing a very bad job at keeping in touch with these communities. I feel like I lack the time and energy required.

Of course, this also applies to Slack, Teams, and IRC, but is not limited to services that target synchronous communication. Keeping up with mailing lists and bulletin boards has been equally problematic for me.

>My question is: how do people keep up?

Why keep up? Priorities.

>So far I have been doing a very bad job at keeping in touch with these communities. I feel like I lack the time and energy required.

Let me put it this way: Long ago, back when tigers used to smoke [I'm not Korean, but this is awesome], there was a student who liked getting laid a lot. Though his grades suffered and he failed a lot in college because he was distracted. He didn't have money so he didn't have mobility and logistics and got laid less and less frequently and his grades suffered more and more.

At some point, he decided to focus on studying. He was on the ball, thus he had more time, thus he was able to work, thus he was able to get logistics down, thus he was able to get laid at a ridiculous frequency and practice time-management to take care of business. When he let go of all but one thing, he had that thing down which saved time and paradoxically and ironically allowed him to do the other things he was trying to do.

Get one thing down. That is the advice I give to people who want to do it all and have their attention fragmented and fail to do them all. Sometimes, allocating 10% of your time to ten things gets you 0% return on investment on all things.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, as they say. Sequential works: until you can do one thing and get it down pat, don't do something else. Only add later.

how do people keep up?

I don't. That's OK. It's fine to miss things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com