I loved WhatsApp when it first became a rage.
To be able to message friends instantly, know if they have read my message, and get notified with a bell sound every time I received one - all of it was thrilling.
Until...
Seeing someone 'online' but not immediately getting a response from them started bothering me.
Being asked why I hadn't yet replied to somebody's message after reading it felt intrusive.
The endless WhatsApp notification sound and the subsequent need to check the phone started interrupting my life.
The piling number of 'unread' messages began making me restless.
Thankfully, deactivating screen and sound notifications, putting groups on mute, and hiding 'last seen' and 'the double blue tick when one reads the message' came as a much-needed relief.
And then a year ago, Slack made its entry into my life.
Just like WhatsApp, the initial excitement was, well, high.
To be able to have remote-working teams within reach was a wonderful feeling.
Have casual conversations, make requests, respond to group messages, and react to others' updates - I felt like I was at the center of all the action in the organization.
But in no time, the green button on Slack became my terror.
I felt the pressure to be online, even though it wasn't an organizational mandate. It felt like the proof of my productivity if I can put it that way.
I felt the urge to respond to messages as soon as it was sent - to me personally or in a group.
I felt a deep sense of FOMO if I missed a group conversation or was late by a few minutes to see it and by then the conversation had died down.
What this meant was that my workday looked something like this:
Plan my to-do. Connect with my team on Slack. Sit down to do some research. Answer a ping from the digital marketer. Do some more research. Be looped into a group conversation on Slack. Sit down to write. 'Urgent help' pop-up on Slack from the Sales team. Get that work done for them. Come back to the content I was actually supposed to finish that day. Get notified about a customer win and go back to congratulating everyone on Slack....and so ends the day.
And God forbid, if you have Slack configured on your phone, your work-life balance blurs dangerously.
On Slack, everything can seem like it is important and needs your attention right now. Conversations can happen at odd times. And information gets lost in endless threads of conversation.
But just like WhatsApp, Slack can be a great collaborative tool if we introduce some checks. At my workplace back then and because we had the flexibility and luxury given our open work culture, I started doing these things that turned out to be extremely useful.
1. Deleted Slack from my phone: Waking up and responding to Slack messages was the worst feeling for me. Hence, I made the decision to delete the app from my phone even though it came with a lot of FOMO in the beginning.
2. Focus time with no green light: I negotiated with my manager to have focus time during which I'm only writing and would keep my Slack off to avoid any disturbance. I also communicated the same with my immediate team.
3. Introduced emails to the communication mix: Shifted some of the more important and not-so-urgent conversations to emails. This meant that all the information was in one place and it enabled asynchronous communication.
What about you? What are you doing to get away from the green light anxiety produced by Slack, Teams, and other messaging apps at work?
(Originally published on LinkedIn)
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