Note: This post talks about Slack, but the same rules apply to Teams (or whatever else floats your boat/is forced upon you). I don’t currently wear khakis, so I’ll be keeping things simple and just covering Slack.

A year or so ago I attended a company offsite, where (during a trivia game) my former boss showcased the fact that she’d had the IT team pull Slack usage numbers across the company, and that we should all guess who had the company’s highest message counts.

When the dust settled, I was #1 by an honestly jaw-dropping margin. Something like 25,000 messages over the most recent quarter, and that was during a period where I was out of the office for 3 weeks.

Some might take this moment to stare into the abyss and re-evaluate their life choices. Not this guy, I took it as a badge of honor.

Why? Many people (frankly far too many) treat Slack the same way they treat email, as yet another annoying place where people can reach you, and a system through which updates are shared and answers are obtained in service of completing checklists and sending status updates. Project management porn, in other words.

Don’t get me wrong, it 100% does all of these things, but those using it only for that purpose are really missing the forest for the trees.

How so?

Well, unlike communication mediums like email in which all relevant parties are manually added (or real-time meetings where invitees are specifically invited), Slack differs in that the communications and conversations quite often take place in “public” (through channels that anyone can find and lurk/participate in).

As the post-COVID world has shifted more and more to remote work (despite some remaining death rattles from legacy micromanagers), the mix of public and private areas provided by systems like Slack takes on an absolutely vital importance. Here’s why:

1. It replaces the critical in-office encounters (and unpredictable magic that can result) that don’t exist otherwise in remote-first companies.
   
   
2. It forces people to learn how to express themselves in text. There is and always will be a place for real-time audio and video meetings (Slack itself of course offers these), but becoming world-class at expressing yourself in written form, no matter how brief, is a skill most don’t have to begin with, and those that do are losing it fast as they trip over themselves to outsource much of it to AI tools.
   
   
3. It creates a sense of ambient awareness. Far too often, companies (despite their best intentions) inevitably find themselves with siloed fiefdoms, so those that can maintain awareness across as many groups and teams as possible are treated like they have superpowers. Curiosity is almost always a good thing, and forcing yourself to let what can feel like an overwhelming amount of information constantly wash over you may sound insane, but you’ll come out the other side a far more informed and empathetic person, able to make connections and draw conclusions you’d otherwise have missed.

Traditional manager types are always super horny for clear boundaries and job definitions, but as nearly everything in society is changing, ambient awareness can help transform more traditional roles into “glue” roles, which (despite offering extremely murky career progression paths, a separate problem to solve) are essential in ensuring that one hand keeps talking to the other.

“Systems” are all the corporate rage right now, but systems without people operating entirely outside of and/or across them are like trusting an LLM to produce quality work without human overview. Someday, maybe! Right now in 2026? Suicide.

If you’re buying any of this, you might ask how you could juice up your own Slack game? I’ve got you, dear friend. Here are some learnings I’ve put together from over a decade of using Slack at various companies (along with similar prehistoric but awesome tools like IRC before it)…

Kyle’s 10 Slack Commandments:

1: During working hours, Slack should be your number one priority. Hear that? That’s the sound of a million productivity gurus rending their garments. For real though, nothing paralyzes a company faster than waiting for responses/signoffs/feedback. Regardless of your role as a manager, individual contributor, executive or in-house clown (me), unblocking others is a drug that hits like few others, and the benefits are incalculable.

2: But KYLE! I Am AN ImPoRTANT PeRSon THAT NEEDS FoCuS TIME!!! I get it, but a) it’s 2026, far past time to forcefully fix your brain so that it gets comfortable with multitasking and b) fine, then Slack status messages are your friend. If you’re in the zone, tell everyone as much. If you have no status message set, refer back to commandment one.

3. Don’t sweat channel/message organization. It’s all searchable (to say nothing of how powerful things can be when connected to Claude or your LLM of choice), and the time spent complaining about channel hygiene or reply format etiquette could be better spent unblocking and moving projects forward. But KYLE? HoW wILL I reMeMBER if I’ve been TaGGED or WheRe I SAW SomEthing? First of all, you’re not working in a coal mine. You’re at a desk clicking on things and typing. There are numerous ways to get your shit together and set reminders, none that I’d recommend more than…

4. You need to go all-in on Slack reminders (a.k.a. “snoozing”). Use the clock icon on any message to get it out of your face immediately, and have it sent back to you when needed/when you can address it. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a gamechanger it is to move from “I’m overwhelmed by all of the activity” stress to “I triage anything in seconds, so that I deal with things on my own time” relief.

5. That said, if a message comes in and you CAN do something immediately about it, just do it (don’t snooze it). If it’s a 2-minute ask, just knock it out. And don’t scold people about proper procedures/flows (unless of course it becomes a recurring issue). Unblocking someone fast is far more important than reminding them about TPS Reports.

6. If you’re in a private DM and need to loop others in, just immediately invite them (expanding the DM to include them). Unless justified for something larger, don’t make a new channel or stress over where to post. Slack makes the ability to add people to DMs incredibly easy, and you can even choose how much past conversation context to include. This is the modern equivalent of walking with a colleague over to someone else’s desk.

7. Never use an AI response or automation if you’re reaching out to another human on your team. You look lazy, the work is inevitably shitty, and you’re disrespecting the other person. There are lots of places where AI shines. Interactions between real humans is decidedly not one of them.

8. NEVER ping someone on Slack and then not respond when they immediately ask what you need. This is the most frustrating thing ever, and immediately exposes you as someone bad at managing your digital life and notifications.

9. If you’ve done some deep self-reflection and are confident that you just can’t change and will never be a digital native, that’s fine, but appoint someone on your team to handle this. The rest of the company will be eternally grateful.

10. Treat Slack as a place, not a communication channel. This is where culture lives and sausage gets made. You want to be walking the room constantly, dropping in and assisting where possible. Be the factory floor worker that shares the latest hot goss and news around the water cooler. Don’t be the clueless supervisor that pops by once a quarter and ruins the vibe.

Godspeed, fellow business travelers, and may your Slacking be ever fruitful! 🤝