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Email vs. IM: The Battle for Focus

Date: 2020-12-11 Author: Hasan Scope: Productivity, Team Communication, Deep Work
Table of Contents

1. The Structural Issues with Group Chat

Group chats present several fundamental issues regarding how information is organized and consumed.

Topic Organization: Email Wins

Messages in group chats aren't organized by topic. Consider Email: all information clusters under a single subject thread, making it incredibly easy to search and follow up.

The "Reply All" Noise

"Group chat is like hitting 'reply all' on every email."

In a group chat environment, you have no idea which messages are relevant to you and which aren't. To find what interests you, you must read through everything, searching for that 1% of relevant information buried in the 99% that doesn't concern you.

The "@Mention" Trap

When someone @mentions you in a group chat but you're busy with something else, you might come back 30 minutes later to discover the mention. However, only now the group has generated dozens more messages.

  • ❌ To find who mentioned you and where, you have to scroll through every single message.
  • ✅ In email or structured tools, the context is preserved immediately.

2. The Cost of Fragmentation

Information Snippets vs. Deliberate Structure

Chat messages lack the deliberate structure of email. Instead of explaining everything clearly in one go, people separate their thoughts into multiple lines:

Communicating in fragmented snippets feels like efficient real-time communication, but is actually incredibly inefficient, requiring constant back-and-forth.

Attention Drain

Chat notifications fragment your time and constantly interrupt your work. You can't maintain focus, and consequently, the quality of your work suffers.

3. Strategic IM Usage & Solutions

While Instant Messaging has its place, it requires strict discipline to prevent it from becoming a productivity sink.

The "Pull" Method

Treat IM reading operations like email—pull on a schedule.

  • Do not default to immediate response.
  • Check messages in batches rather than continuously.

The "Create Group" Fallacy

When IM is overused, the default response to any multi-person communication need is "create another group." This escalates IM's time waste and attention drain to new levels.

The Slack Thread Approach

In the few scenarios where IM is appropriate, I prefer the Slack Thread approach:

  • Discussions within threads default to no notifications for the general channel.
  • Search results maintain conversational context.

4. Deep Work & Resource Management

Meetings are Expensive

Multi-person meetings consume more resources than you think. Knee-jerk reactions rarely produce good decisions.

If you're invited to a meeting, either prepare properly or decline.

If others haven't invested deep thought, meetings about important new ideas aren't worth having.

Protecting Focus

Actively create uninterrupted blocks of time for yourself and others to do deep work. Real-time communication and group chat have advantages, but perhaps shouldn't be your default.

Documentation & Asynchronous First

Prioritize asynchronous communication, thoughtful reflection, and documenting ideas and discussions.

Recommended Tools:

Tool Type Purpose
Issues Task tracking and specific problem solving
GitHub Discussions Long-form threaded conversations
Internal Wikis Permanent documentation and knowledge base

5. Core Principles

Deadlines matter. As project lead, constantly assess how workload aligns with deadlines.

Summary:

  1. Stop interruptions: Chat notifications destroy focus.
  2. Write structured thoughts: Avoid fragmented IM snippets use Email or Wikis.
  3. Respect time: Don't use "reply all" or mass group chats for individual issues.
  4. Deep Work: Prioritize thoughtful reflection over real-time reactions.