https://aggressivelyparaphrasing.me/2025/09/30/organize-your-slack-channels-by-how-often-not-what/ Aggressively Paraphrasing Me Aggressively Paraphrasing Me Some of Mark's thoughts and ideas * About Me * Blog * Art Portfolio * Photography * Reblog * Quotes Search [ ] Organize your Slack channels by "How Often", not "What" Written by Mark in Blog A few weeks ago, I changed my Slack channel sections. I'm now more responsive and engaged, while also feeling less stressed. How? By sorting my Slack channels by urgency, or how often I want to read them. What Projects Team Alerts Sibling Teams Announcements SF Office Social Noisy Versus How Often Read Now Read Hourly Read Daily Read Whenever Sorting by "how often" lets me read my most urgent messages first, focusing my energy on what matters to me. Once I feel tired, I stop reading. By focusing on my most urgent and important channels, I hold confidence that I have already taken care of what I need to, reducing my stress. [Screenshot-2025-09-18-at-4]A screenshot of my Slack sections. The top consists of my "high priority" sections like Read Now, Threads, DMs, and new channels. I go through my unreads from top to bottom until I am tired or I'm done. By framing a channel's importance through the Eisenhower Matrix, I focus on how I contribute to channels. Urgent Not Urgent Read Now / Read Hourly Read Whenever Important I directly answer questions, engage I read announcements in conversations frequently, or and keep up-to-date react to them in the real world with changes Read Daily Read Never Not Important I can push the conversation along by Reading and writing in forwarding it to different channels these channels are or tagging more appropriate people meaningless to me This framework is flexible. Your needs and availability will change. Projects go from active development to finished. Social channels go through ups and downs. As these changes happen, you can slide the channel between any category, and it'll still make sense. Misprioritized channels are a source of burnout. Noisy channels in important sections waste time and hide the valuable signal. Important channels in noisy sections are missed opportunities. It's clearest when you think of some sections like Office, Social, and Project. Intuitively, Project is important. Office is important, but maybe not? Social is less important, but I still want to live a happy life. Yet, I kept finding examples that don't fit. Channel What How Often #sf-sweet-treats Office or Read Now -- cupcakes get eaten fast, #sf-nyt-crossword Social - Low/ crosswords and photos are organized #fashion-baddies Medium within 15-30 minutes Priority Office - Low/ Read Never -- It's never worthwhile #sf-it-helpdesk Medium for me to read this channel Priority Project channels Project - High Read Hourly -- I'm often answering that I'm an active Priority questions to unblock other people contributor to Project channels Read Daily or Read -- I want to stay where I'm a Project - High on top of announcements and passive Priority changes, but I'm not actively contributor to contributing I conclude that organizing by "what" is pointless. Why do we organize by "what"? I think because, by default, Slack suggests Priority, Team, Announcements, and Social, priming us for "what". [Screenshot-2025-09-18-at-11] It's easy to categorize by "what". It's easy to explain, and it's easy to have icons. But I don't find it useful. How did I start categorizing by "how often"? Is a channel high or medium priority? Just guess. Your gut instinct is probably right. In the worst case, you're wrong and you slide it up or down. If you're deeply unsure, put it into Read Hourly or Read Now first. You'll quickly know if it was the wrong decision. After a couple of wasted moments, slide them down a level. Repeat until the channel stops bothering you. I've been organizing my Slack by "how often" for almost a month now, and have successfully maintained Inbox Zero for Slack every day. Give it a shot! Productivity Tech -adding my home electricity uptime to status.href.cat Comments Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment * [ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] More posts * Organize your Slack channels by "How Often", not "What" September 30, 2025 * adding my home electricity uptime to status.href.cat August 21, 2025 * I modeled for swap.care, a probiotic deodorant. It works really well! May 26, 2025 * Featured: 18 Reasons Community Porgrams Coordinator! May 25, 2025 Aggressively Paraphrasing Me Social Medias: * Instagram * LinkedIn * MyAnimeList * goodreads * Strava Self-hosted: * ChangeDetection.io * ArchiveBox * Recipes App * Hikariita - Flashcards * Cron * n8n * Lowcoder * Retool * Status Twenty Twenty-Five Log in Designed with WordPress