“Not long ago, discussions of the modern workplace were colored by complaints about the tyranny of email,” Walt Mossberg writes for The Verge. “Employees, especially in office jobs, felt compelled to constantly monitor their work email accounts, even at nights and on weekends. Giant email chains were used to clumsily discuss vital work issues. Workers got roped into things they didn’t need to care about via reply-all or company-wide emails.”
“Then along came Slack, a new approach to internal communications based on the idea of chat rooms,” Mossberg writes. “Slack spread through businesses like wildfire, initially in the tech and media sectors, but now much more widely.”
“t its public launch in February 2014, it had 17,000 users. As of April 1st, 2016, that number had rocketed to 2.7 million daily active users. Though it has plenty of competitors, Slack claims to be the ‘fastest growing business application in history,'” Mossberg writes. “Slack users I know, including me, love many things about the service. As the company likes to brag, it’s fast, it’s transparent, and it’s great for brainstorming. But these users also have gripes. Many complain, for instance, that it can take over your life. And many have ideas for how to make it better. So here are a few ways to improve Slack…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As with email — and most everything else – the crux of the problem remains the same: Too much data and not enough tools to manage it efficiently.
The data is the problem not the tools. Our brain is already the greatest tool in our posession. Slack works well, but it just adds another “thing” on top of email. It may replace work emails, but you’re still using multiple accounts in your personal life.
The secret hack to dealing with the “tyranny of email” is to stop working in a soul-sucking office environment. I did it and I’ve never looked back.