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2 hours ago
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A few weeks ago, I changed my Slack channel sections. I’m now more responsive and engaged, while also feeling less stressed. How? By sorting my Slack channels by urgency, or how often I want to read them.
| Projects |
| Team |
| Alerts |
| Sibling Teams |
| Announcements |
| SF Office |
| Social |
| Noisy |
Versus
| Read Now |
| Read Hourly |
| Read Daily |
| Read Whenever |
Sorting by “how often” lets me read my most urgent messages first, focusing my energy on what matters to me. Once I feel tired, I stop reading. By focusing on my most urgent and important channels, I hold confidence that I have already taken care of what I need to, reducing my stress.
A screenshot of my Slack sections. The top consists of my “high priority” sections like Read Now, Threads, DMs, and new channels. I go through my unreads from top to bottom until I am tired or I’m done.By framing a channel’s importance through the Eisenhower Matrix, I focus on how I contribute to channels.
| Urgent | Not Urgent | |
| Important | Read Now / Read Hourly I directly answer questions, engage in conversations frequently, or react to them in the real world | Read Whenever I read announcements and keep up-to-date with changes |
| Not Important | Read Daily I can push the conversation along by forwarding it to different channels or tagging more appropriate people | Read Never Reading and writing in these channels are meaningless to me |
This framework is flexible. Your needs and availability will change. Projects go from active development to finished. Social channels go through ups and downs. As these changes happen, you can slide the channel between any category, and it’ll still make sense.
Misprioritized channels are a source of burnout. Noisy channels in important sections waste time and hide the valuable signal. Important channels in noisy sections are missed opportunities. It’s clearest when you think of some sections like Office, Social, and Project. Intuitively, Project is important. Office is important, but maybe not? Social is less important, but I still want to live a happy life. Yet, I kept finding examples that don’t fit.
| Channel | What | How Often |
| #sf-sweet-treats #sf-nyt-crossword #fashion-baddies | Office or Social – Low/Medium Priority | Read Now — cupcakes get eaten fast, crosswords and photos are organized within 15-30 minutes |
| #sf-it-helpdesk | Office – Low/Medium Priority | Read Never — It’s never worthwhile for me to read this channel |
| Project channels that I’m an active contributor to | Project – High Priority | Read Hourly — I’m often answering questions to unblock other people |
| Project channels where I’m a passive contributor to | Project – High Priority | Read Daily or Read — I want to stay on top of announcements and changes, but I’m not actively contributing |
I conclude that organizing by “what” is pointless.
Why do we organize by “what”? I think because, by default, Slack suggests Priority, Team, Announcements, and Social, priming us for “what”.
It’s easy to categorize by “what”. It’s easy to explain, and it’s easy to have icons. But I don’t find it useful.
How did I start categorizing by “how often”? Is a channel high or medium priority? Just guess. Your gut instinct is probably right. In the worst case, you’re wrong and you slide it up or down. If you’re deeply unsure, put it into Read Hourly or Read Now first. You’ll quickly know if it was the wrong decision. After a couple of wasted moments, slide them down a level. Repeat until the channel stops bothering you.
I’ve been organizing my Slack by “how often” for almost a month now, and have successfully maintained Inbox Zero for Slack every day. Give it a shot!
