I have been a Slack user for a while, 4 ½ years to be exact. One would argue even a power user. I have 11 workspaces on my desktop application. Realistically, I use 6 of them every single day. It’s the main form of internal communication for us at both BattlBox and Carnivore Club. I have always been an ambassador of the brand, love the platform, even bought stock the day of their IPO (the stock decision really has not panned out thus far). From time to time there have been little issues but nothing major. Until yesterday…
Monday mornings, similar to a lot of people I assume, are very hectic for me. Starting at 10am, the next few hours are stacked with status and planning calls. Until yesterday, I failed to realize how intertwined Slack was in all of these meetings. From reviewing finished graphic assets to quickly pinging other team members when a question arises on a call, Slack is a part of the infrastructure that keeps these quick meetings efficient. When it went down, I hit a wall.
In hindsight, it’s completely my fault. I stack Mondays with no room for error. When one thing goes wrong or gets delayed, it has a snowball effect. My biggest takeaway from yesterday was simply how dependent I am on Slack.
When a file could not be uploaded on Slack or a message was not going through, I did not resort to sending an email or text with the information. I just kept trying on Slack. I kept closing and reopening the application. I would then check Slack on my phone to see if that was working. I restarted my computer. That is where the counterproductiveness and inefficiency came from, it was self induced. Somewhere along the last 4 ½ years, I had trained myself to be dependent on Slack. It was not a good feeling.
Should I curb this behavior to not be dependent on a single platform for my efficiency? Absolutely!
Will I?
No, Slack seems to be working this morning.
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John Roman is the Chief Marketing Officer of BattlBox and Managing Partner of Carnivore Club. While those are his flagship brands, John is involved in a over a dozen other ecommerce brands from a equity/partner/advisor capacity.
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