A focused developer at their computer
생산성
Slack의 Slack

How our devs reduce distractions (and unnecessary meetings)

Four ways Slack can help engineers find their ideal state of flow

작성자: Nic Vargus2020년 7월 31일Abbey Lossing의 일러스트

Context switching and an engineer’s mile-long trail of mental notes are sworn enemies. As legendary computer scientist and entrepreneur Paul Graham says, “One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they’re on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s a quick check-in, a daily standup, or a few friendly DMs at precisely the wrong time. Each can result in derailing your engineers’ flow. Thankfully, the answer is as simple as the problem is complex: Carve out dedicated focus time for your engineers.

We asked a dozen of our own engineering managers how they, and Slack itself, help their teams dedicate time to their most important work.

Block out your calendar

It’s hard to be productive when you’re jumping in and out of meetings. Encourage your team to put recurring holds on their calendars for focused work (and make sure these times are honored). These “focus blocks” allow developers to put their nose to the grindstone without fear of interruption.

Shannon Burns, an engineering manager, goes one step further and guides her team to book their focus time at the right time. “I encourage my reports to pay attention to their own circadian cycles and find out which times of day tend to be better for focused thinking, routine tasks or broad thinking,” Burns says. “Occasionally, when someone on the team is feeling overwhelmed, they’re pushing themselves to do types of work at the wrong time of day for them, usually due to an unspoken sense that they ‘should’ be doing something at a certain time.”

Several managers mentioned Graham’s Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule theory, which posits the cascading effect a short meeting can have on a maker’s (i.e., developer’s) productivity. For several managers, an important takeaway is to ensure that you’re grouping meetings for ICs so they can carve out at least a half day for focused work.

Cancel your meetings

A question we often hear at Slack is “What kinds of meetings are most appropriate for Slack?”

“We try to communicate and drive decision-making in channels,” says Steven Chen, the director of platform engineering. “We use meetings for human connection or when we think nuance will be lost in text.”

You may be starting to see the pattern, right? More focus time almost always means fewer meetings. One way our managers cut down on meetings is to transform them into check-ins done in channels.

If something can be done asynchronously, it works better in a channel. This includes most informational, one-directional meetings, like status checks. If it can be done in a public setting, that makes it a candidate for a check-in done in a public channel, where other teams can learn from yours.

Many informational meetings involving multiple parties can also translate to Slack channels, with the added benefit of not requiring a note taker and being more inclusive to quieter folks who don’t always feel comfortable speaking in front of audiences, or people with certain disabilities.

If you’re looking for more inspiration for pruning your meetings, we’ve written about the meetings that work best in Slack and how to make your meetings more effective.

Establish no-meeting Wednesdays

Many managers we spoke to empower their team to set up a full eight-hour focus block on their calendar one day a week and devote that entire day to tackling big, complex projects. Neville Bowers, Slack’s director of software engineering, says that even before Covid-19 shifted Slack’s office to a distributed model, he promoted one work-from-home day a week, which was designed to save people from meetings and office distractions. It helps if everyone on your team chooses the same day (we go with Wednesday).

No matter which day your team chooses, it’s good to make it the same every week. As time-management coach Elizabeth Grace Saunders wrote for the Harvard Business Review, “Making a meeting-free day a recurring event instead of picking the day week by week increased my chances of setting boundaries and following through.”

Don’t discount DND

Sometimes the best way to eliminate distractions is to eliminate everything but the work. Customizing your notifications is one method to cut down on noise while ensuring that you and your team never miss out on something important.

And when all else fails, empower your team to activate Do Not Disturb on their phones or computers, put on a pair of headphones, and ignore every possible distraction. When the hard work is done, any updates you missed will be neatly organized in their respective channels, where you can catch up at your convenience.

이 포스트가 유용했나요?

0/600

훌륭해요!

피드백을 주셔서 감사합니다.

알겠습니다!

피드백을 주셔서 감사합니다.

죄송합니다. 문제가 발생했습니다. 나중에 다시 시도해주세요.

계속 읽기

협업

Slack 10주년, CxO 조찬모임: ‘Slack me’가 조직의 소통 방식이 되기까지

이번 조찬모임은 기업 고객과 함께 성장한 Slack의 시간을 돌아보고 말랑말랑하고 좋은 조직문화에 대한 탐구를 함께 할 수 있었던 시간이었습니다.

새 소식

Slack이 10주년을 맞이했습니다!

10년간 이룬 혁신과 10가지 필수적인 Slack 기능들을 기념하며

협업

꼭 맞는 음악을 들려주는 Slack 허들의 새로운 주크박스

팀 멤버들의 참여를 기다리는 동안 기발한 음악으로 지루한 대기 시간을 달래줍니다

생산성

어려운 경제 상황 가운데 Slack이 거래 성사를 지원하는 방법

엔터프라이즈 영업 담당자가 Slack으로 거래를 더 빠르게 성사시키는 방법을 알아보세요.