“Please” and “ASAP” backfire: the words that slow work down
An analysis of nearly 300,000 delegated tasks in Slack identifies counterintuitive findings about task management in the workplace.
What actually gets work done on time
Drawing on nearly 300,000 tasks across more than 1,000 teams, several findings upend common assumptions — including that politeness and urgency speed things up.
Politeness and urgency backfire
Avoid diffusion of responsibility
Post it publicly
Always set a due date
Build in extra time for West Coasters
Four small habits. Twice the results.
Four habits consistently separate reliable delegation from the rest: assigning a single owner, posting the task in a shared channel, setting a tight deadline, and sending the request in the morning. Each one independently lifts on-time delivery and together they add up — a task set up with all four habits was more than twice as likely to be completed on time as one that followed just one of them.
Share of delegated tasks completed on time.
Ordinary fixes, extraordinary difference
Where the numbers come from
On-time statistics reflect the 135,141 completed, delegated tasks that had an original due date; tasks people assigned to themselves are excluded. A task is counted as on time if it was completed on or before its due day, evaluated in the task’s own timezone. Findings are correlational and describe observed patterns rather than proven cause and effect. All findings are based on actual task data from the Chaser platform, not self-reported surveys.
The only Slack-native project management tool that works with Claude
Chaser recently launched its Claude integration — teams can plan, assign, and track work directly with Claude, and AI can assign tasks to people, not only receive them.
Built to end the chase
Chaser is the only Slack-native project management platform that helps teams turn messages into tracked tasks, automate follow-ups, and maintain team-wide visibility, without adopting another tool. Now integrated with Claude and other generative AI tools, Chaser is the only platform that brings AI-powered project management into Slack, where teams already work.
Chaser is based in Toronto, Canada. Learn more at trychaser.com.
Turn these findings into your team’s defaults
Chaser applies these habits automatically — single owners, shared visibility, real due dates, and follow-ups that never forget. All inside Slack.
