You Don’t Need Slack To Be Productive. You Need Discipline.

I’ve heard it more than once, that you can use Slack to reduce your email inbox overload – it’s a lie (sort of).

While I’m happy that Slack has raised more money and indeed Slack is a great tool, you still have to check “something” – that something being your Slack threads.

My beef is NOT with Slack or any of the other great communication tools on the market.

My beef is that people think they can REDUCE their communication clutter by shifting to a new tool.

That’s not the case.

Here’s what I’ve found is the best way to reduce information overload and have a SANE inbox.

• Rob Hatch of Owner Magazine shared in a talk at Social Media Tulsa that he a) gets rid of social notifications so he’s not distracted b) plans his day and c) as thoughts come into his head he writes them down so we won’t forget.
• Asana is my tool of choice for organizing teams around projects and tasks. Using it enables you to not forget what needs to be done and ensure you know who is doing it. It’s also a great tool to keep track of the conversations around projects – like Slack does.
• My inbox is carefully managed. Like Seth Godin, I have  zero email policy. Meaning before I go to bed at night, there’s no emails (or at least not more than 10 or so) in my inbox. I saw someone’s inbox yesterday and they have THOUSANDS of emails. Ouch. I also use filters. My email newsletters automatically go to one folder, for example.
• Last, I have a little yellow sticky note I use to keep track of a few key points that might come to my mind or that I need to remember from a phone call.

How do you organize your day?