Instant messaging is productivity kryptonite
Summary
Long, drawn-out conversations on instant messaging platforms are the fastest way to waste productive time. They erode goodwill amongst coworkers and scarcely address the depth that topics need.
The async-first playbook came out in September 2023. I wrote the first article on this website in May, 2022. I’ve written close to 200 articles since then, many of them on asynchronous work, and I’ve produced several other pieces of content on modern work practices. And, of course, I’ve failed to change the world. The world of work is trigger-happy about meetings, and many people, particularly managers, brag about their meeting-filled days.
Even though I have far more meetings these days than I used to, I protect my time for deep work with just as much sincerity as I did before. I’d much rather spend hours writing things up once than attend dozens of meetings trying to convey the same idea. These days, I find myself avoiding instant messaging the same way.
Welcome to the multi-day meeting
As someone playing a global role in a large, 10,000-person company, I find that instant messaging is the fastest way to lose productive hours. I don’t mind a quick FYI on IM, or a fun message that attracts a bunch of reactions. I also don’t mind simple questions and answers on chat.
What I absolutely detest is long, protracted debates on instant messaging. Someone says something provocative. A few minutes later, someone else responds. The new message ignites five other people, and they join the “discussion”. Soon, someone breaks the thread because they don’t get how the IM software groups responses. Now you have multiple threads to follow. It’s not evident how to respond to a specific part of a specific message. Misunderstandings ensue. No one assumes positive intent. People get so emotionally involved that they can’t disengage. The more emotionally charged the debate, the less likely chat messages are to resolve the argument.
And so, “lightweight” instant messaging becomes a multi-day meeting. Often, the same topic that people could resolve through a conversation or at least agree to disagree, occupies time and cognitive space for hours, days and weeks. I don’t have a way to quantify the impact of using IM this way, but it sure doesn’t feel like a productive use of anyone’s time.
Better ways to debate
So, as a matter of principle, I stay away from chat debates. I’d much rather spend time writing up structured reasoning in a document and have people comment on specific parts of my thinking. I’m also quite happy to schedule time with people for real-time debate, where we can observe body language and tone, instead of letting short, terse messages create misunderstandings. I’d much rather do a docket-clearing meeting to address several small topics at speed than pull digital teeth over instant messaging.
The spectrum of syncrhonousness
If you look back at one of my early pieces, I describe the spectrum of synchronousness (above). The idea of the spectrum is to shift left whenever possible. Chat sits on the right-hand side of the spectrum. If you’re trying to reduce meeting overload, remember that instant messaging is no less pernicious. I’d argue that while you can have a degree of asynchrony with instant messaging, in many cases, it robs you of far more time than meetings do. It’s faux-asynchrony at best. Write better documents instead. Have better meetings instead. Resist the temptation to join that chat debate. It rarely ever ends well.