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Taming Slack

2021-08-22T14:19:27+02:00

Slack: It’s both a blessing and a curse. While I really enjoyed it in the early days, over time, I have noticed more and more similarities to social media, whose negative effects are probably more widely known. For example, it’s all too easy to lose track of time and going offline can leave you with a fear of missing out. However, since Slack is primarily used at the workplace, it’s easier to justify its necessity.

In his latest book, A World Without Email, Cal Newport defines the term “hyperactive hive mind”:

A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.

Slack is really good at supporting this kind of workflow. Unfortunately, teams easily fall into this process without due care. Accordingly, breaking out of it requires deliberate effort from the entire team.

While a more holistic change is certainly worth striving for, there are still some things any individual can do. In an effort to provide more structure and reduce its role as a time sink, I’ve customized Slack more and more over the last two years. Here are my tips.

Being intentional

If there’s one takeaway, be intentional about your use of Slack. Don’t keep it constantly running in the background or open on a second screen. Don’t check it whenever a red dot appears in your Dock. Instead, open Slack at specific times, with specific goals, and close it when you’re done.

Usually, I open Slack and read any messages three to four times a day. If absolutely necessary, people can still reach out via direct message. That’s the primary reason why I have Slack on my personal phone. Of course, you can make a different trade-off and keep Slack completely off your phone.

Do Not Disturb

Make use of Do Not Disturb. Setting up an automatic schedule so you aren’t bothered off-hours is a good first step, but you can also manually enable it whenever you’d like to focus on your work. Slash commands like /dnd until 12:00 make this really easy.

Your status

You can use your Slack status to set expectations and communicate your availability to your team. For example, before you dive into a focus session, you could set your status to 🎯 Focusing.

In March 2020, Slack introduced custom sections. They really helped me change how I catch up on channels for the better. As you can see in the screenshot above, I have two main sections: Top Priority and Low Priority.

Top Priority is everything I’d like to catch up with regularly and mostly includes channels of my immediate team as well as #general and the like.

Low Priority includes everything else and I usually only read these once a week.

When I see others’ Slack windows, I’m usually taken aback by the huge amount of channels in their sidebar. Ever since I learned about it, I’ve been a big fan of Slack’s “Unread conversations only” setting. I don’t care about read channels in my sidebar and don’t need to be distracted by them. When I need to find a particular channel, I prefer Command-K anyway.

Red badges

Slack’s red badge is one of the first things I like to disable. Its presence in my Dock is very attention-grabbing and reinforces the constant need to get to “Slack Zero”. Especially given my Low Priority section, that’s not a goal I strive for.

I like to go even further and recolor Slack’s red badges within the window itself by setting a custom theme value for “Mention Badge”. That’s why Slackbot’s badge in the screenshot above is gray.

On a related note, disable notifications for threads. Threads are a useful feature to provide some structure in larger teams and busy channels. However, I don’t see why threaded messages should be of greater importance than unthreaded messages in the same channel.

Yourself as your default channel

Lastly, in an ostensibly egoistic move, make Slack’s conversation with yourself your default channel. Unfortunately, Slack doesn’t offer a way to specify a default channel when opening Slack, but I’ve gotten into the habit of always opening my own conversation before closing Slack. This way, you aren’t immediately distracted by any new messages in the channel you happened to be in when you last used Slack.

If you’re interested in further tips, I recommend Arun Venkatesan’s deep work guide to Slack. His post made me aware of Slack’s custom theme colors and how you can use them to reduce the prominence of red badges.

Unnecessary .pkg packages

2021-05-02T16:20:30+02:00

This week, I had the pleasure of joining my first Webex meeting. Despite several pages telling me otherwise, I couldn’t find a way to join the meeting in my browser. Fine, let’s download their application. However, I didn’t get an .app but a .pkg—also known as an installer package.

I’m always skeptical about installer packages. Unlike .app applications, installer packages prompt for an administrator password. Not only does this prevent non-administrators from installing the application, it also provides the package way more liberty.

That’s not always an unreasonable request. I can certainly understand why VirtualBox uses an installer package and why it requires administrator privileges. However, if I just want to join a single meeting, I shouldn’t need any of that.

Thankfully, there are ways to poke around in .pkg files¹. Sometimes, you can right-click and “Show Package Contents”, but that’s not always available and it isn’t available for my Webex.pkg. In such cases, there’s the built-in pkgutil²:

$ pkgutil --expand Webex.pkg pkg

When right-clicking pkg/Webex.pkg, I can now actually “Show Package Contents”. However, it’s mostly one big undecipherable Payload.

It’s not over yet, though. pkgutil has another, undocumented option:

$ pkgutil --expand-full Webex.pkg pkg

Now, there’s no longer a Payload file but a Payload directory. Inside, there are two Cisco Webex Meetings.app applications, one for Intel and one for Apple M1. I picked the Intel one and copied it to my Applications folder.

At last, I was able to join the meeting.

To be fair, the new Webex is better about this. When downloading directly from webex.com, you get a disk image with the typical .app and /Applications alias. (Although, they still make you choose between Intel and Apple M1.) I don’t know why I was offered a different Webex version.

While writing this post, I’ve stumbled over Suspicious Package. It makes this whole process way more user-friendly and can tell you many more things about (suspicious) packages. One for the toolbelt!

Is it a file? Is it a folder? It’s all an illusion. ↩
I wish I could link to Apple’s official documentation of pkgutil. There is none. ↩

On the design of date range pickers

2021-03-06T12:03:59+01:00

Let’s say I went for a run yesterday afternoon and would like to add that workout to the Health app¹:

I’ve started with the date, followed by the time. However, as soon as I selected Mar 5 as the end date, the start time was helpfully corrected to the current end time. Instead of Mar 5 from 4 to 5 p.m., I ended up with Mar 5 from 11:16 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Please, don’t discard user input until the user is actually done with their input.

Let me go off on a tangent about recording iPhone screens while visualizing touches. There’s ShowSingleTouches, but it doesn’t work with simctl’s video recording. On a real device, I could configure AssistiveTouch, but it’s not available in Simulator. In the end, I just dropped the idea. Frankly, it should be way easier to visualize taps on iOS. ↩

Podcasts 2020

2020-12-31T12:07:14+01:00

Inspired by Stefan Zweifel’s article, I thought the end of the year might be a good time to take a look at my current podcast subscriptions. Without further ado:

Accidental Tech Podcast (English)

I remember coming across some Hacker News comment linking to episode 25 because of John Siracusa’s rant on Minecraft mods. I’ve been listening ever since.

Almost Daily (German)

Rocket Beans TV’s talk show format in audio form. The episodes obviously heavily depend on the guests and topic at hand but it’s almost always an entertaining hour.

Cortex (English)

Looking at my recent blog posts, it should come to no surprise that there’s got to be at least one show about productivity. Cortex is that.

Darknet Diaries (English)

Incredibly intriguing stories in a very professionally produced format.

Denkangebot (German)

There haven’t been many episodes but the ones so far were interesting and well-produced. For my taste, political shows don’t need to be high-frequency anyway.

Freak Show (German)

I can’t pinpoint when I’ve started listening but I vividly remember the mobileMacs era. Recent episodes (which there haven’t been too many of in 2020) have been hit-or-miss for me, however, the better ones are still worth staying subscribed.

nerds.fm (German)

More an honorable mention as no episode was published this year. To be fair, there has only been a total of 27 episodes in its run since 2013 anyway. Still, I’m hoping for one sporadic episode in 2021.

Podcast ohne (richtigen) Namen (German)

Probably the biggest outlier in this list. Whereas most of my other subscriptions are either tech-related (like ATP) or quite specialized (like Rechtsbelehrung), this one is simply German entertainment without much structure.

Rechtsbelehrung (German)

While vaguely related to technology, Rechtsbelehrung is my excursion into the interesting area of law.

Meditation

2020-12-24T10:04:08+01:00

Today, I’ve completed the last session of Balance’s Foundation and Advanced plans.

After reading The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness this summer, I wanted to give meditation a more elaborate try. I’ve dabbled with it a couple of times in the past but never really long enough to establish a habit.

I didn’t start out with Balance right away. Unsurprisingly, my first stop was Headspace. After some sessions, I gave room to other contestants: 7Mind, Calm, Oak, the Plum Village app, Smiling Mind, and Waking Up. For some, I couldn’t stand the teacher’s voice, which surely is a very personal thing. For others, the app felt overloaded and overwhelming, a point which Frank Chimero and Tom MacWright already wrote about earlier this year.

Ultimately, I’ve settled on Balance. Their personalized plans are an interesting distinction to the usual plain recordings found elsewhere and make for a more varied program. The app is straightforward and both of their voice actors, Leah and Ofosu, are pleasant to the ear (albeit a bit too hippy-dippy-lovey-dovey-huggy-wuggy-fuzzy-wuzzy from time to time). On a final note, it’s definitely been a plus to explore all of that for free thanks to their one-year promotion.

Now, after over 15 hours with Balance and streaks lasting several weeks, I’m comfortable drawing at least an interim conclusion. Where do I stand on the topic of meditation? Well, I don’t know. It may have had some benefits or it may not have had any. It’s difficult to truthfully evaluate and judge such changes. Jamees Bedford recently paused his meditation habit for two weeks and felt immediate downsides; I’m certainly far from that. I’m not sure whether or how long I will continue but perhaps I’ll take some advice from Kevin Wammer and just sit in silence and focus on my breath. There doesn’t need to be an app for everything.

Six months after my digital declutter

2020-11-30T18:28:11+01:00

In May 2020, I partook in a month of digital declutter as described in Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism book. As the point of this exercise wasn’t just 30 days of digital detoxing but rather being more mindful about my usage of technology, I’d like to review its long-term effects—now, half a year later.

Email

Usually, I check my email inbox once a day. I never check my emails on my iPhone; my Mail app is in some folder with notifications turned off. I’ve started this arrangement in May and have been happy with it since then.

However, I’m noticing some difficulties from time to time. For example, I don’t want to see all new messages because some service sent me a login code. Similarly, I don’t want to be distracted by other emails when opening Mail to reply to one specific message. I’m thinking of turning off any automatic refresh, so I can at least open Mail without new messages coming in.

News

Although rarely, I did have some slip-ups where I’ve read one COVID-19 news article too many or visited one tech news site after the next. Other than that, I’m still trying to only read tech news as part of my feeds and to only check COVID-19 updates once a week.

During some phases, that wasn’t even often enough. Some regulations were announced and enacted in shorter time spans. I’m now experimenting with “scheduling” checking for updates in advance. After all, as long as it’s not an impulsive stroll from one newspaper to the next, I’m not too worried. (I wish there was an RSS feed which spares me all the speculations and drama and just keeps me informed on any really important developments.)

Podcasts

I’ve completely banned podcasts in May. I don’t regret doing so but I’m also happy they are back. It was funny to open Podcasts for the first time after one month: animations went wild and years-old episodes starting showing up. It certainly didn’t expect me coming back after all this time.

Having withheld for one month gave me a clearer perspective on my subscriptions. Consequently, some podcasts I’ve unsubscribed right away and, after some contemplating, I even dropped one which I’d been listening to for almost a decade.

In general, I’m now less stressed about my “inbox”. Previously, I’ve set a strange benchmark: I’ve always tried to “work off” my list of unheard episodes but as soon as I’ve reached inbox zero, I became bored and looked for more episodes to listen to.

I’m never checking my Twitter timeline. However, I’m sometimes getting sucked into other parts of Twitter—either by coming across a single user’s profile or by receiving Twitter’s “In case you missed it” notifications. I still wish there was a setting to get rid of these emails and to actually receive emails when someone replies to you. However, my behavior probably just gives more weight to their supposed target: “In case you missed it” drives engagement.

Video

To put it bluntly, YouTube has been my biggest downfall. While it took me over two months to actually open it again, it quickly ramped up from there and I found myself mindlessly spending evening after evening on YouTube.

My main mistake might have been not to set any clear rules. In comparison to my twice-a-week rule for feeds, I didn’t set anything specific for videos—perhaps because I foolishly believed I wouldn’t fall back into it. Finally, two weeks ago, I put an end to it and designated two days per week to YouTube. Funnily, I haven’t even made use of them since then.

Furthermore, I’m now prioritizing content with high production value. For example, it’s really easy to spend hours on Twitch streams and Let’s Plays because they are a second-by-second live stream, without any editing. In comparison, TV show episodes are edited tirelessly and are clearly constrained in their length. In other words, before spending an entire evening on Twitch, I now much rather watch a 40-minute episode on Netflix.

Web feeds

As with Podcasts, I completely abandoned my feed reader in May. Upon opening it for the first time in June, there were over 500 unread items. As not to check them too often and to avoid reestablishing its earlier role of the go-to application whenever I had a few minutes to spare, I set a boundary of two days per week. I also don’t mind as much if my inbox isn’t empty anymore; it’s rather a friendly nudge to get rid of some subscriptions.

While drafting this post, some changes came to my mind that I almost forgot were even a thing before May. For example, I’m no longer listening to podcasts when falling asleep. Previously, it’s been a frequent habit of mine to repeatedly rewind the sleep timer until I’ve dozed off. Similarly, I’m no longer distracting myself at meals. Previously, I’ve frequently put on some TV show or listened to a podcast episode while eating dinner.

For sure, I’ve also been reading more books this year than ever before. It’s usually my number one ~~time killer~~ time-filler when my above rules won’t allow for anything else. I’m not sure whether that’s positive though. Who’s to say books are better than TV shows or video games? And shouldn’t I instead spend my time more intentionally on other projects? After all, Cal Newport put a big emphasis on “exploring and rediscovering activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful”. If I’m just restricting my use of technology for the sake of it, where’s the purpose in that?

Committing to OmniFocus

2020-11-16T17:18:52+01:00

Life without a task manager became unbearable, so I’ve purchased OmniFocus¹.

Not having a task manager didn’t relieve me from any tasks. Instead, it forced me to keep all of them in my head which isn’t a particularly sustainable system if you care about more than a handful of things². I’m exaggerating (only ever so slightly) because scattered notes and email inboxes have fulfilled this role.

Therefore, it should come to no surprise that my Inbox has been growing rapidly within the first few days of my OmniFocus trial. Everything from short-term errands to long-term ideas, including this very blog post, found itself in my Inbox. I’m not yet sure which actions should then rather be kept outside of OmniFocus but this is something I’ll learn along the way. Right now, having a cognitive dumping ground is liberating.

My choice didn’t land on OmniFocus by accident. I’m indifferent to its design but OmniFocus is still the only major player with end-to-end encryption—a fact I’ve lamented over earlier this year.

If OmniFocus is one thing, it’s powerful. There’s a spectrum between to-do apps and task managers and OmniFocus definitely falls into the latter category. That category poses danger, though. Your task manager is a means to an end; it is all too easy to spend more time managing your tasks than actually doing them.

Things strikes a better balance. It’s certainly less powerful than OmniFocus but constraints help to focus. The built-in Today list makes it easy to set priorities while focusing on getting things done. Granted, custom perspectives allow you to set up all kinds of views in OmniFocus. It’s like being the architect of your own task manager. Even so, you can only get so close to replicating the Today list from Things.

Technically, I didn’t purchase OmniFocus but subscribed to it. And with a monthly subscription, you may well argue I’m not committing to OmniFocus at all. Rest assured, there’s already a deferred OmniFocus action to evaluate a traditional license down the road. ↩
Some people would argue you shouldn’t care about more than three things. ↩

How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price

2020-06-30T18:38:57+02:00

How to Break Up with Your Phone on phonebreakup.com.

I didn’t expect much going in. I’ve merely picked up this book while scrolling through book lists on minimalism. After not only finishing the book but also completing the 30-day “breakup”, I now know that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. How to Break Up with Your Phone offers way more insight and wide-ranging advice than its cover would lead you to believe.

The book is split into two parts. First, the wake-up, which lays the theoretical foundation and explains why you might want to reconsider your relationship with your phone. Second, the breakup, which is a 30-day hands-on guide to improving that very relationship. Throughout, the guide doesn’t just focus on your screen time but rather makes you question your use of technology in general, how you could leverage its upsides while avoiding its (addictive) downsides, and how you could fill your newly won time with fulfilling activities.

Personally, most of the advice would have been on point for me one or two years ago. After iOS 12 introduced Screen Time, I’ve slowly started to rethink the amount of time I spent on my iPhone. During this breakup now, I’ve learned that I already have had developed a good relationship with my phone and that the book’s target audience is on a whole nother level. Ironically, right on day one, I actually overestimated the number of times I pick up my iPhone.

For the typical smartphone user though, this book fits perfectly. Its breakup guide will make people more than a bit uncomfortable, which is the whole point of the exercise. As for me, I’m certainly not the book’s typical reader, having just completed a digital declutter inspired by Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. Despite that, it was refreshing to see that Catherine Price’s and Cal Newport’s core message are very similar.

Read in May–June 2020.

The 4 Pillar Plan by Rangan Chatterjee

2020-06-16T18:39:00+02:00

The 4 Pillar Plan on drchatterjee.com.

The 4 Pillar Plan presents a set of lifestyle interventions to improve your overall well-being. Each chapter describes five different pieces of advice and focuses on one of four important pillars: eat, sleep, relax, and move.

The book heavily leans on the practical side and, as such, most suggestions should be rather achievable. For example, you don’t need to turn your diet on its head but reducing your sugar intake wouldn’t hurt. Or, going to bed at the same time every day won’t work, but you can at least try to get up at the same time every day.

Dr. Chatterjee even makes clear that one shouldn’t aim to check off all twenty interventions, only to perhaps end up achieving all Eat interventions but falling short on the Sleep ones. Instead, it’s better to pick two or three and keep a healthy balance across all four pillars.

After having recently read Cal Newport’s Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, I was glad to see an entire pillar dedicated to relaxation. Thinking back, downtime definitely fell short in those books and left me with the thought of tirelessly trying to increase one’s productivity whenever possible.

At under 300 pages, The 4 Pillar Plan is quite a quick read and its breakdown into 20 individual interventions helps follow along. Furthermore, each intervention is neatly summarized into one or two sentences and there are several succinct tips on how introduce some of the changes to your life. Dr. Chatterjee doesn’t strive for perfectness which makes his advice way more approachable and, ultimately, way more likely to stick.

Read in June 2020.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

2020-06-08T21:03:45+02:00

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck* on markmanson.net.

After having read maybe one too many self-help books in recent weeks, I’ve decided to give The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck a chance as it is sold as “the self-help book for people who hate self-help”.

Essentially, it carries the same message as Essentialism but doesn’t take itself as seriously. You should be selective about which things in life you give a fuck about and not let yourself hold you back. Mark Manson embellishes these points across nine chapters, mostly with anecdotes from his own life.

Read in June 2020.

sonicdoe.com

Taming Slack

Being intentional

Do Not Disturb

Your status

Custom sections in your sidebar

Unread conversations in your sidebar

Red badges

Yourself as your default channel

Unnecessary .pkg packages

On the design of date range pickers

Podcasts 2020

Meditation

Six months after my digital declutter

Email

News

Podcasts

Video

Web feeds

Committing to OmniFocus

How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price

The 4 Pillar Plan by Rangan Chatterjee

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

sonicdoe.com

Taming Slack

Being intentional

Do Not Disturb

Your status

Custom sections in your sidebar

Unread conversations in your sidebar

Red badges

Yourself as your default channel

Unnecessary .pkg packages

On the design of date range pickers

Podcasts 2020

Meditation

Six months after my digital declutter

Email

News

Podcasts

Social networks

Video

Web feeds

Committing to OmniFocus

How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price

The 4 Pillar Plan by Rangan Chatterjee

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson