How do you deal with endless work notifications?


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What do you suggest for managing tool distraction? Slack, Jira, Notion, email, etc. all blow up at once, and it feels like I can’t keep up. Are there any best practices I should know about?

The most common recommendation for dealing with notification overload is to define your deep work hours and turn off notifications during this time. However, this ends up limiting the wrong thing (deep work hours). So, instead, I always recommend the reverse of this:

Box in your sync hours so the rest can be defaulted to deep work

What does this look like in practice? For me, I set aside the first 30 minutes and the last 30 minutes every day for sync catch-up. During this time, my team members know they can reach me immediately. I check and respond to messages in various tools like Slack, Notion, and email.

Any message I receive that would take less than 5 minutes to answer gets an instant response. For anything that would take more than 5 minutes, I save it to a separate folder so that I can do the work it requires during my deep work time without having to deal with remembering/finding it later.

However, I will immediately mark it with a 👁️ emoji to let the sender know that I have seen the message and am working on it. If I think it will take longer than a business day, I also add a note about when they can expect to receive a response.

There are many variations in the length and frequency of this approach. Here's another example of what it can look like:

Choose a variation that makes sense for your work.

The Boxed Sync approach offers tons of benefits, including:

  • Making it clear when team members should expect an instant response from you - Despite media headlines, overwork is a much bigger problem than underwork on remote teams. Remote team members default to thinking they must instantly respond to "prove" they're working. The problem is that this leads to excessive context switching, which kills their productivity and burns them out. Setting clear response expectations upfront keeps you from falling into this common trap.
  • Saving you time through batching - Responding to a single message as soon as it comes in is as efficient as washing one piece of clothing at a time. You're spending a much larger cumulative amount of time on notifications than you would if you would batch checking them. You'll also save mental energy when you stop letting notifications constantly interrupt your deep work.
  • Keeping you from being in reactive mode all day - Instead of letting notifications direct your day, you can prioritize what actually matters. Less mindless reaction, more intentional activity. Don't be a captive to the tool. The default notification settings are built to keep you using the tool as much as possible. Set up personal boundaries and change the default settings to avoid falling into this black hole. My free Slack Hacks guide is a great place to start.

Don't fall for any "best practice" that involves adding more tools. That's very rarely the answer. Instead, focus on the key foundational elements:

  • Filter: Change the default settings to suit your needs
  • Streamline: Consolidate as much as possible
  • Constrain: Set up the Boxed Sync approach

These steps will help put you back in the driver's seat so you can do your best work.

TLDR

Don't let work notifications steer your day.

Instead, use the Boxed Sync approach to limit the time you spend checking alerts.

Manage the notifications instead of letting the notifications manage you.

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Quote of the Week

One way to boost our willpower and focus is to manage our distractions instead of letting them manage us.

- Daniel Goleman

In Other News

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"On top of that, there’s another aspect gnawing at me (and you’ll have to excuse me for getting a little dark). I think there is a driving force here that is psychological, almost existential, and which is not really about remote work per se, but which is manifested in that issue. Namely it’s our fear, as a society, to think about the pandemic."

Spotify Says Its Employees Aren’t Children — No Return to Office Mandate as ‘Work-From-Anywhere’ Plan Remains
'“You can’t spend a lot of time hiring grown-ups and then treat them like children,” Spotify’s Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Katarina Berg says. Berg says she understands the return-to-office mandates for companies who want to “go back to what they know,” but Spotify has yet to encounter a reason to enforce a return-to-office mandate for its many employees.'

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What did you think of this issue? What do you hope you'll see in the next one? I read every response. Feel free to reply to this message or DM me on Twitter @mar15sa.

I truly appreciate you taking the time to read this. Hope you have a lovely day!

Marissa
​Founder, Remote Work Prep

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