I gave this advice to someone today: don't discuss work things at the chat. Go async... always.
We're working on a new product, and we don't use the chat other than to celebrate new features. I came back from holidays this week, and I didn’t open any chat to catch up on what had happened. We're working on new stuff this week, and the project chat is crickets.
The more you use chat to get things done, the more wasteful, disorganized, and inefficient you are. And if real-time chat is the backbone of your communications, you are choosing pain, which is great unless it’s because you ignore better alternatives.
I personally have nothing against Slack, but if your colleagues demand it because of the thousands of real-time chatting goodies it has, I'd see it as a symptom of a deeper problem to fix. You don't need a fancier chat, you need less chat.
Two pieces I always recommend and that rewired how I approached work years ago:
https://37signals.com/group-chat-problems/
https://37signals.com/how-we-communicate
We're working on a new product, and we don't use the chat other than to celebrate new features. I came back from holidays this week, and I didn’t open any chat to catch up on what had happened. We're working on new stuff this week, and the project chat is crickets.
The more you use chat to get things done, the more wasteful, disorganized, and inefficient you are. And if real-time chat is the backbone of your communications, you are choosing pain, which is great unless it’s because you ignore better alternatives.
I personally have nothing against Slack, but if your colleagues demand it because of the thousands of real-time chatting goodies it has, I'd see it as a symptom of a deeper problem to fix. You don't need a fancier chat, you need less chat.
Two pieces I always recommend and that rewired how I approached work years ago:
https://37signals.com/group-chat-problems/
https://37signals.com/how-we-communicate