Don't let your tools control you.

[00:00:00] You're listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? We cannot let our tools control us. They cannot be the boss of us. Okay? Slack and Microsoft Teams cannot be the boss of you. I feel really strongly about this, and I just had to make this episode today because I was talking to a friend about this, and here's the thing, if you let Slack or Teams – I'm just gonna say Slack because I use Slack –

[00:00:46] If you let it control your work day and how it goes, you're almost never gonna accomplish the things on your to-do list or you will, but you won't be able to spend as much time on [00:01:00] them or do the quality of work, kind of quality of work that you may actually have wanted to do. A certain part of your day needs to be reserved for reaction based work, right?

[00:01:15] When teammates ask you questions or you're having a live conversation in Slack, and you need to give it all the attention. Those situations happen. They're a normal part of working in a team. However, you also deserve dedicated time, not affected by Slack to do the deep work, to do the necessary work that can only be done on your own without distractions or ideally without distractions.

[00:01:49] Okay, and because I read Cal Newport's work, and I have for a long time, I call that work, Deep Work. [00:02:00] How can we make this happen? It means letting go of our feelings of FOMO, of this fear of missing out. Everyone will live if they cannot hear from you for a couple hours. Okay? You can snooze your notifications and quit Slack for one or two hours at a time.

[00:02:22] and do your work. It is okay. It is allowed. It is encouraged. You should do it because you will be better at your job. You will not only be better at the work that is deep, you will be better when you are being present with your teammates because in the back of your mind, you're not worrying about, oh, I, instead of doing this, I should be doing this X project or doing this x task.

[00:02:48] You know? you can be fully present for your teammates and you can be fully present for your deep work. But that can only happen if we let go of our feelings of FOMO, of being [00:03:00] worried that we're not gonna be there the instant someone needs us. Most of our teammates do not need us instantly. Most of the work we do does not require urgent reactions.

[00:03:12] It is okay if they have to wait a couple hours to hear from us. And there are ways to mitigate this. Do you have a team calendar? All right. In the team calendar, block out some time and say, this is my deep work time. Do you use Slack? Slack has statuses. Set your status as deep work, give it an end time.

[00:03:31] Snooze your notifications quit slack. Anyone who goes to DM you is gonna see the status. They can hover on the status and find out when that ends, and then they know that is when you'll get back to them. It is okay if people don't hear from you right away. It is okay if you don't react to everything that happens in your remote work life right away.

[00:03:54] This is a reminder for my friends and also for me. But seriously, [00:04:00] the FOMO situation, it's gotta go. Because we all deserve to do awesomely at our work and also to be present for our teammates and to feel less anxious about just everything in general. And that means not letting our tools control us.

[00:04:17] Don't let your instant messaging system control you. Control IT. Be assertive. Take control and set limits and boundaries on how you interact with those tools. I promise you, it will all be okay. Nothing will burn or be on fire if you step away once in a while to do important work without the distractions.

[00:04:45] Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.