Omg!! I am so glad you created this post -- get out of my head lol
Yes yes yes and yes! I definitely have Slack fatigue and it's been grinding my gears ever since. I actually feel there's been a huge co-dependency to use Slack as the main comms tool to drive any key decisions and this has been a pain in my side. Email isn't even used as much in my company -- only for like big corporate announcements.
When you actually read the real purpose of Slack, I believe it's being misused in a lot of cases. Slack was designed to promote productivity asynchronously but most place underestimate the true power of this tool and HOW to properly use it.
How I've mitigated Slack fatigue is:
1) Turning off all my mentions/notifications. It was driving me nuts to get pinged all throughout the day and it was disrupting my creative flow.
2) Organize your channels, break them out by priority, announcements, low priority items. If you must keep notifications on, then I believe keeping notifications on for the priority channels only, suppress everything else.
3) I set time aside each day to check-in on Slack channels; similar to how some folks set time aside to check emails only before getting back to work.
4) Use your status to communicate your availability! If you know you are on a deadline, communicate this in your status and pause notifications. I tend to let folks know when I'm in deep focus work and let them know that I'll be slow to respond. This let's people know your busy, focused and working and that you'll get back to them when you can.
4) Use the workflow and reminders in Slack to keep up with your work, when to share updates, etc. I also integrate various apps into my Slack account like Microsoft Office, so I can keep track of upcoming meetings versus toggling between multiple apps.
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