"Please" and "ASAP" Backfire: Chaser Data Reveals 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

TORONTO, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Chaser today released findings from a two-year analysis of project management in Slack. Drawing on nearly 300,000 tasks across more than 1,000 teams, the report identifies the specific, repeatable habits that make a delegated task more likely to be completed on time.

The findings are based on actual task data from the Chaser platform, not self-reported surveys. Several findings upend common assumptions, including that politeness and urgency speed things up.

Key findings

• Politeness and urgency backfire. Adding these to a task yields roughly 10% lower on-time delivery. Tasks including the word "please" were completed late 38.2% of the time, and tasks marked "ASAP" or "!!!" were completed late 37.7% of the time. Tasks written as neutral, direct requests were completed late 31.4% of the time.
• Avoid diffusion of responsibility. A task with a single owner was 66.8% more likely to be delivered on time than one shared between two people (67.3% vs. 40.3%). Work that people volunteered to claim was the most reliable of all, at 70.9%.
• Build in extra time for West Coasters. Tasks in Eastern-time workspaces are 32% more likely to be on time than tasks in Pacific-time workspaces.
• Post it publicly. A task shared in a channel was 44% more likely to be on time than one sent by private message (65.6% vs. 45.7%).
• Always set a due date. A task with no due date was 2.5 times as likely to never be completed at all (5.4% vs. 2.2%).

Chaser is the project-management platform built for Slack that lets both people and AI assistants like Claude assign and track work. Built to end the cycle of endlessly chasing colleagues, Chaser automates follow-ups and tracks all tasks inside of Slack - where your team already works. Not just another plug-in to another platform, Chaser brings task management to the Slack channels where the work is actually happening.

The habits compound

Chaser identified four habits that 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 (78.4% vs. 38.0%).

"I never thought about these as 'habits,' but reading the report, I realized I do all of them," said Dennis Chiratcu, founder and CEO of Writeof. "I've learned not to be loose with deadlines, my team actually asks me to be specific. Now Chaser does that for me, so I'm not the one constantly chasing people. It's become the backbone of how we run; we rely on it to stay on top of the time-sensitive work we do for clients and it keeps anything from slipping through the cracks. We used to run task boards in Notion, but with Chaser right inside Slack, we'd never use anything else."

"The most encouraging thing here is how ordinary the fixes are," said Josh Martow, CEO and co-founder of Chaser. "Whether you use Chaser or another project management tool, these findings can help anyone make their collaboration and delegation more effective. The data makes it clear that little tweaks to how a task is created have a big impact on how and when the work gets done."

Methodology

Findings are drawn from 290,214 tasks created in Chaser between June 2024 and June 2026 by 8,111 people across 1,109 teams, ranging from workspaces of a few Slack members to organizations of more than 90,000. 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.

To read the entire report visit: https://www.trychaser.com/chaser-insights. To access the press kit, click here.  

Chaser recently announced its formal launch and Claude integration. The integration makes Chaser the only Slack-native project management tool that lets teams plan, assign, and track work directly with Claude. It is also the first to enable AI to assign tasks to people, rather than only receiving tasks from them.

About Chaser 

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 

Media Contact
Grace Halvorsen
Lightspeed PR
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SOURCE Chaser