Try this neat trick: disable push notifications for email, Slack, HipChat and any other communications except emergency channels such as PagerDuty. This will do wonders for your productivity. I’ve faced some blowback from people who expected me to respond immediately in real time, but I’ve assuaged their concerns by explaining my focus model and the need to eliminate distractions. In my experience, my correspondents actually enjoy receiving a thoughtful reply composed in my own time rather than a snap reaction fired off just to get the sender off my lawn.

Another neat trick I've picked up on from other people use is to use DND mode on Slack when you're focusing. That way if it's actually critical to get a hold of you in real time (but not so critical that it warrants a page) there's an option to do that.

People are surprisingly respectful of it, and unlike just going dark it signals to people that you're available if need be but focused on something.

I just got the new touchbar MacBook — making DND a primary shortcut was an easy way of making this completely frictionless.

I agree with this sentiment. In smaller startups, I feel like the bigger distraction is Slack. I've found that closing Slack for a few hours a day results in me having a more productive day.

Note: notifications are disabled on Slack, but it still causes distractions.

From the article: "Slack lets us talk and make the same decisions we would have made in meetings anyways.". So there's still IM etc.. Easier to turn off, though, no?

I came here to ask about this exact same thing...

How do they address the onslaught of Slack interruptions?