Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

by Nir Eyal

ason Fried says group chat is “like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.” This is especially notable because the company Fried founded, Basecamp, makes a popular group-chat app. But Fried understands it’s in his company’s interests to make sure his customers don’t burn out. He offers several pieces of advice for teams using a group-chat app, whether they use Basecamp, Slack, WhatsApp, or other services. “What we’ve learned is that group chat used sparingly in a few very specific situations makes a lot of sense,” Fried wrote in an online post. “What makes a lot less sense is chat as the primary, default method of communication inside an organization. A slice, yes. The whole pie, no . . . All sorts of eventual bad happens when a company begins thinking one-line-at-a-time most of the time.”