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Instant Messages Management

Instant messaging in all it's forms is becoming the main communication channel.

As any other input system, if not used wisely, it can be a sink of productivity.

Analyze how often you need to check it⚑

Follow the interruption analysis to discover how often you need to check it and if you need the notifications or fine grain them to the sources that have higher priority. Once you've decided the frequency, try to respect it!. If you want an example, check my work or personal analysis.

Workflow⚑

I interact with messaging applications in two ways:

  • To read the new items and answer questions.
  • To start a conversation.

The passively reading for new items works perfectly with the interruption management processes. Each time you decide to check for new messages, follow the inbox processing guidelines to extract the information to the appropriate system (task manager, calendar or knowledge manager). If you answer someone or if you start a new conversation, assume that any work done in the next 5 to 10 minutes will probably be interrupted, so choose small or mindless tasks. If the person doesn't answer in that time, start a new pomodoro and go back when the next interruption event comes.

Use calls for non short conversations⚑

Chats are good for short conversations that don't require long or quick responses. Even though people may have forgotten it, they are an asynchronous communication channel.

They're not suited for long conversations though as:

  • Typing on a keyboard (or a mobile ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ) is slower than talking directly.
  • It's difficult to transmit the conversation tone by message, and each reader can interpret it differently, leading to misunderstandings.
  • If the conversation topic is complex, graphical aids such as screen sharing or doodling can make the conversation more efficient.
  • Unless everyone involved is fully focused on the conversation, the delays between messages can be high, and all that time, the attendees need to manage the interruptions.
  • If you fully focus on the conversation, you're loosing your time while you wait for the other to answer.

For all these reasons, whenever a conversation looks not to be short or trivial, arrange a quick call or video call.

At work or collectives, use group rooms over direct messages⚑

Asking for help through direct messages should be avoided whenever possible, instead of interrupting one person, it's better to ask in the group rooms because:

  • More people are reading, so you'll probably get answered sooner.
  • Knowledge is spread throughout the group instead of isolated on specific people. Even if I don't answer a question, I read what others have said thus learning in the process.
  • The responsibility of answering is shared between the group members, making it easier to define the interruptions role.

Use threads or replies if the client allows it⚑

Threads are a feature that allows people to have parallel conversations in the same room in a way that the messages aren't mixed. This makes it easier to maintain the focus and follow past messages. It also allows users that are not interested, to silence the thread, so they won't get application or/and desktop notifications on that particular topic.

Replies can be used when the conversation is not lengthy enough to open a thread. They give the benefit of giving context to the user you're replying to.

Use chats to transport information, not to store it⚑

Chat applications were envisioned as a protocol for person A to send information to person B. The fact that the message providers allow users to have almost no limit on their message history has driven people to use them as a knowledge repository. This approach has many problems:

  • As most people don't use end to end encryption (OMEMO/OTR/Signal), the data of their messages is available for the service provider to read. This is a privacy violation that should be avoided. Most providers don't allow you to set a message limit, so you'd have to delete them manually.
  • Searching information in the chats is a nightmare. There are more efficient knowledge repositories to store your information.

Use key bindings⚑

Using the mouse to interact with the chat client graphical interfaces is not efficient, try to learn the key bindings and use them as much as possible.

Environment setup⚑

Account management⚑

It's common to have more than one account or application to check. There are many instant messaging solutions, such as XMPP, Signal, IRC, Telegram, Slack, Whatssap or Facebook. It would be ideal to have a client that could act as a bridge to all the solutions, but at least I don't know it, so you're forced to install the different applications to interact with them.

The obvious suggestion would be to reduce the number of platforms in use, but we all know that it's asking too much as it will probably isolate you from specific people.

Once you have the minimum clients chosen, put them all on the same workspace, for example an i3 window manager workspace, and only check them following the workflow rules.

Isolate your work and personal environments⚑

Make sure that you set your environment so that you can't check your personal chats when you're working and the other way around. For example, you could configure different instances of the chat clients and only open the ones that you need to. Or you could avoid configuring the work clients in your personal phone.

For example, at work, I have my own account and another for each team I'm part of, the last ones are managed by all the team members. On the personal level, I've got many accounts for the different OpSec profiles or identities.

For efficiency reasons, you need to be able to check all of them on one place. You can use an email manager such as Thunderbird. Once you choose one, try to master it.

Fine grain configure the notifications⚑

Modern client applications allow you to define the notifications at room or people level. I usually:

  • Use notifications on all messages on high priority channels. For example the infrastructure monitorization one. Agree with your team to write as less as possible.
  • Use notifications when mentioned on group rooms: Don't get notified on any message unless they add your name on it.
  • Use notifications on direct messages: Decide which people are important enough to activate the notifications.

Sometimes the client applications don't give enough granularity, or you would like to show notifications based on more complex conditions, that's why I created the seed project to improve the notification management in Linux.