If you want to be ahead of other engineers and have a meaningful impact, then you’ll want to maximize the number of uninterrupted deep work sessions. The more you can fit in a week the more you’ll achieve (rfcs, implementations, reviews).
This is one of the biggest contributor for high performing profiles.
To manage this when using Slack you can:
- set your status as “deep work” and decide to pause notifications for x hours
- use “mark as unread”. when you want to peek something but not act on it yet
- use “remind me” on messages you want to deal later on through the week
- avoid DMs has much as possible, so not just one person can help you, but anyone from your team
- avoid Slack on the phone
Then deal with notifications in bulk.
Slack isn’t killing our productivity, HN and twitter are not killing it either.
Our addictions to notifications is, but we can manage this with discipline and training.