9-5, Monday-Friday, in-person office work are all relics of the past. Let's revolutionize how you live by changing how you work.
How do you deal with endless work notifications?
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Hey there, I'm creating a list of async-first remote companies to share with you all soon. If you think your company should be included, let me know! Now, back to our Q&A series, where I answer popular remote work questions, explain why common advice doesn’t work, and share what I recommend instead. Reply to this email if you have a question you'd like me to cover next! TLDR below 👇 | Read this on the web | Subscribe 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:
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:
These steps will help put you back in the driver's seat so you can do your best work. TLDRDon'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. 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 NewsWhat’s behind the return-to-office demands? Spotify Says Its Employees Aren’t Children — No Return to Office Mandate as ‘Work-From-Anywhere’ Plan Remains
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