F2F #84: The whatsapp drain

I'm not gonna lie: I don't enjoy chats nor texting and whatsapp is making my life significantly worse.

WhatsApp is the one communication tool nobody has a system for, and it is slowly killing us all. Every week, I have 2 or 3 conversations about how unsustainable it is to keep up with everything we receive: calls, emails, whatsapps, notifications from apps, etc.

We have slowly, but then suddenly, normalised the fact that we have an open chat with virtually anyone in the world at all times. Conversations don't start nor end, they persist and linger for years, occupying mental space and draining our energy.

Most people I know are drowning in this big fucking mess. Their whatsapp notification badge is permanently in the double digits because most don't know that you can hide the unread count (one of the best decisions of my life). Messages from clients sit next to messages from mom, next to a group chat from a conference three months ago that nobody left because it would be rude, the school parents group, next to a group created only to shoot an intro (that should've been an email), next to that group where you share fun stickers and memes all the time.

I don't know when and how that happened, but I went from "no business on whatsapp" to basically using it as an open chat with anyone I've ever interacted with - clients included. Not to mention the unsolicited contacts and spam. I dread each an every "hi" I get from an unsaved number. Nothing good ever comes out of those.

As much as we hate email, because it's been largely misused and abused by salespeople and marketers, email has had decades of productivity frameworks built around it. Slack - and other work tools - has channels and threads. Whatsapp has nothing like that: no snoozing, no reminders, no filters, no views, no nothing. Worst of all, you have to use other tools on top of whatsapp (like Beeper - not recommended, though) if you want that.

Whatsapp is the last frontier of inbox chaos, and because it blurs personal and professional in a way that nothing else does, the usual advice doesn't apply. You can't just "declare inbox zero" on whatsapp without also ghosting your family and missing important reminders. It's nearly impossible to separate the grain from the chaff.

Well, if this long preamble resonates with you, I've got a present for you. Here's what I actually do. It's not magical, but it partially solves the problem.

First, I split Whatsapp into two layers. The first layer is what you see when you open the app: the active inbox. I keep this deliberately small: it only contains key people I want to hear from quickly, and whatever conversation is genuinely active and time-sensitive right now.

You can also pin a few conversations to the top of the view. I have pinned the chat with my partner, one I have with myself where I send voice notes of braindumps I need to review later, and a shared group of cool shit I have with my partner.

Besides the pinned notes, other important things, never more than 5: a group with my MarsBased cofounders, chats with the people I'm meeting tomorrow and that's right about it. That's it. If something is there, it has my attention.

The second layer is archived chats. And here's the thing most people get wrong: archived doesn't mean forgotten: it means deliberately deprioritised. I archive everything that doesn't belong in layer one. Group chats, acquaintances, people I like but don't need to be on top of, conversations that can wait and pretty much everything else. By default, Whatsapp keeps archived chats out of sight when new messages arrive, which is exactly what I want. They accumulate there, fine and undisturbed, and I go through them on my own terms, maybe once a week, maybe less. I haven't found a way to hide the count, so it still burns in the back of my mind, but a little less than if I saw them every time I fired up the app.

The key mental shift is this: archived is not a to do list. The first inbox is, sort of, but not archived. Archived is "it's important for you but not for me, sadly". It's a legitimate second inbox, and "unread" inside it is not ignoring people, but applying triage. I wish I could answer everything, but I can't. It burns me out and drains me, and it piles up on an already stressful life.

The hardest part of setting this up is deciding who goes in layer one, and being honest about it. An active chat doesn't mean it's full of important or relevant things. On the contrary, most super-prolific chatters usually send more filler content than meaningful things.

One good rule of thumb is: is the upside of keeping up with this chat bigger than the downside of not doing it? if so, keep nurturing. Else, to triage.

Layer one rotates slowly. It's not a permanent VIP list, but a live reflection of what's actually happening in my life right now and what urgent matters I must attend to.

The other thing you have to do is to let things take care of themselves organically. Some will die out because they were never meant to be nor to be taken care of. Some will lose importance because the moment will pass. In layer two, if it's important, they will call you. I used to go back to months-old chats and apologise and make excuses about dropping the ball. Not anymore. Heck, I am even considering deleting the chats periodically so they don't consume mental real estate there and I don't know what happened in them.

The system has one genuine limitation: whatsapp doesn't make this easy. There's no folder, no label, no filter, no "mark all as read", no nothing. It's like designed on purpose to make your life significantly shittier. You're working with archive as a blunt instrument, and it takes a bit of discipline to not let layer one bloat back to sixty conversations over time. It takes discipline and courage to send people to layer two, but I do it knowing that when there'll be something important, they'll go back to layer one. Logically, people who never send important nor relevant stuff stay in purgatory forever and they'll organically drop down positions in the archive (as they should in life).

Maybe I wrote too long of a post for such a small tweak, but it's genuinely improved - or, rather, unworsened (someone has to invent this word, for fuck's sake) - my life. It's about taking control back of this app lest it takes control of you.

When I open WhatsApp, I see a small number of chats that I actually want to engage with and care about. The rest exists but they don't live with you or in your head. It might sound arrogant, but I've gone past the point of no return with whatsapp and someone else is paying the price.

If you manage whatsapp the same way you manage everything else, which is to say, not at all, this might be the simplest change you make this month.