ThinkingTime for Slack: Leave more time to think

State of Product Analytics Report

Maker

👋 The best conversations are ones where everyone contributes their ideas and people discuss things on equal footing. Everyone is heard. One of the biggest problems in a lot of conversation is people sometimes compete to respond first instead of most thoughtfully. The first comment or commentor might then set the tone and dominate the follow on conversations. These are the bad "first responders". This is most notorious on Slack where everyone is always on and talking in channels. So we built a way to do this for Slack. You put forth a request or question and gather all of the responses before they are released. It gives everyone some time to think and not worry about being late to the conversation. @cyrusradfar and I have always been jamming on random things. I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago with some ideas about tools that can help us live from home better. One of these I initially called "ReplyTime" which would help give people time to think before replying, or giving everyone time to think. We got more excited as we started brainstorming it and Cyrus decided he wanted to sign up and build it. We had a lot of fun making this. We hope it provokes new thinking and how to take a little more time before everyone types. Enjoy it! Let us know if you have any questions or feedback. We'll respond here on ProductHunt as much as we can today :)

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5yr ago

Ryan Hoover

Product Hunt

This could be particularly useful for distributed teams working across timezones. @joshelman @cyrusradfar, what use cases are you imagining?

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5yr ago

Josh Elman

State of Product Analytics Report

Maker

@rrhoover --- Here are a few use cases we've already heard for when this can be useful: * Initial design feedback to a new mockup, proposal, logo, or really any creative (we've all been there when the first response is "hate it" and you go on immediate defense) * Gathering questions ahead of a meeting or an all-hands * Starting a weekly retrospective over Slack and getting people to give meaningful input * Discussing a candidate after a full day of interviewing where you don't want to bias each other's feedback * Initiating a brainstorm around a tricky problem * Requesting input or suggestions for a team bonding event … and so many more! Look back in your recent slacks and email threads and see how many times conversations got derailed by the first responder!

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5yr ago

Cyrus Radfar

ThinkingTime for Slack

Maker

@joshelman @rrhoover Yes! I felt this a lot with my last team. We 'solved' some of the problem by requiring overlap and waiting on many conversations. I think there are a few obvious use cases listed on the site and, as we built it, we realized that this would be a good replacement for the "anyone have any thoughts on X" question often posted in larger meetings. Kill that awkward pause where folks need to "think quick". If you use the 5 minute setting, you can use it in-meetings, in retrospectives, at the start of recurring meetings to allow for a review and feedback of some content, etc.

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5yr ago

Ninan Thampy

@rrhoover @joshelman This a great model and app for all teams as it gives the opportunity for everyone to really think through the question or issue. Great app. Just upvoted.

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5yr ago

Larina Dana

@joshelman @cyrusradfar @rrhoover private chat please

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5yr ago

Chris Thorne

@joshelman Great idea. Any plans for a version for MS Teams?

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5yr ago

Cyrus Radfar

ThinkingTime for Slack

Maker

@joshelman @chris_thorne1 thanks for the interest, Chris. I reviewed some of their APIs but we want to focus the learning/iteration on Slack until we really solve the problem well. I'd love to be on MS Teams and in GMail, as well!

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5yr ago

Jeremy Glassenberg

@joshelman @chris_thorne1 @cyrusradfar A Gmail integration would be great (perhaps it's a matter of using AMP in the content of an email for a simple interaction right in the email) although I can understand starting in Slack. I'd also consider a Trello plugin (PowerUP) or Jira integration, where engineering teams sometimes organize retrospectives

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5yr ago

Cyrus Radfar

ThinkingTime for Slack

Maker

@joshelman @chris_thorne1 @jglassenberg good ideas, Jeremy. I appreciate the insights.

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5yr ago

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