The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Hard to keep up?

Of course, it is nice to be able to com­mu­ni­cate with one anoth­er both eas­i­er, more fre­quent­ly, and faster, but some peo­ple I meet through my work feel increas­ing stress from need­ing to keep track of all the places where mes­sages or com­ments might appear. Quick­ly read­ing what you receive is one thing, but remem­ber­ing to write a reply to what you do not respond to imme­di­ate­ly tends to become yet anoth­er thing to remem­ber, which means you will have less space and ener­gy to think about oth­er things that require your attention.

If you are to han­dle the increas­ing inflow of mes­sages of all kinds with ease you need to keep an eye on the chan­nels with struc­ture so that all the apps and pro­grams you use become won­der­ful tools of com­mu­ni­ca­tion rather than bur­dens ham­per­ing your flow and progress.

Do this

If you also have many chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and have at some point missed mes­sages or com­ments, tried to remem­ber what chan­nel some­one wrote some­thing spe­cial in, or even for­got­ten to respond to mes­sages you read quick­ly and thought you would answer lat­er, then do this:

1. First, make a list of all the chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you use. It can, for instance, be your email account(s), text mes­sages, Mes­sen­ger, What­sApp, LinkedIn Mes­sag­ing, DMs on Insta­gram, com­ments on Face­book, com­ments on Insta­gram, com­ments on LinkedIn, men­tions on Teams, DMs in Slack, and so on.
   
2. For most peo­ple I meet, email is the most com­mon­ly used chan­nel, so in order to avoid the need to keep track of all these places simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, make all chan­nels (for which this is a pos­si­bil­i­ty) send noti­fi­ca­tions to your email when some­thing new hap­pens. This way you will get an ordi­nary email when some­one mes­sages you or writes a com­ment in the app or plat­form — either every time it hap­pens or peri­od­i­cal­ly but then con­tain­ing all the mes­sages or com­ments you have got­ten since the last noti­fi­ca­tion.
   
   Doing this will mean that you no longer need not con­stant­ly log in and keep an eye on all the dif­fer­ent apps, but can rely on the app or plat­form to noti­fy you when there is some­thing that needs your atten­tion. For most chat-based col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms (such as Slack and Teams) you do not need to receive emails for every­thing but can adjust the set­tings so that you are only noti­fied of cer­tain kinds of activ­i­ty or messages.
   
3. Look at which chan­nels, apps, or plat­forms you use that do not offer the option of receiv­ing noti­fi­ca­tions via email, and decide how often you need to open them up to see if there is any­thing new to attend to. If once a day is enough, cre­ate a recur­ring to-do-task for each chan­nel that tells you to open it up and see if there are any new mes­sages every morn­ing.
   
   If you need to keep a clos­er eye on it, I sug­gest you make recur­ring book­ings in the cal­en­dar at the times dur­ing the day when it is most appro­pri­ate and use­ful to open it and have a look. Add a check­list to the cal­en­dar book­ing con­tain­ing the chan­nels you will review. The task then becomes even eas­i­er and you will not risk for­get­ting an app or channel.

Less stress and an overview with ease

If you cre­ate a clever struc­ture that helps you remem­ber when to have a look at the chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you use some­what reg­u­lar­ly, you will have to make less effort to keep track of every­thing. The risk of miss­ing some­thing impor­tant is reduced and you will not have to feel a tinge of stress when anoth­er chan­nel is added to the bunch you already entertain.

What’s your way?

How do you keep track of all the chan­nels, chats, apps, and plat­forms you use? Per­haps you have found an app that keeps track of every­thing which I am yet to dis­cov­er (but not for the lack of try­ing to find one!). If so, please email me and share. Your tip could poten­tial­ly help loads of people. 

(Receiv­ing email is one thing, but have you thought about how to be more struc­tured when email­ing?)