I don't remember where I read it, in a book or on HN or even if someone told it to me. But I learned that when requesting time or disruption: certain positions need specialised handling. An example: A receptionist does not necessarily need focus time, and is interrupt driven, so their work should not stretch to more than 5 minute intervals; if something takes more than 5 minutes it must be filed for someone else. A m…
There are more demand driven roles but probably every person you interface with on a day to day basis professionally has hard work to do. Sales copy? Focus. Figuring out some accounting discrepancy? Focus. Trying to actually plan out the next quarters projects in a decent way? Focus. Trying to find a good place for a year end party? Focus!
The reality is that everyone has similar interruption issues, but understands the existence of needs beyond themselves when working on a team. Programmers are maybe special in the level of coddling gotten on this topic. Along with a dose of having people more likely to have general executive control issues.
This mythologizing gets in the way of trying to tactically improve things. Real things programmers can do, such as take notes on paper, documenting ideas, writing exit/entry notes, and many other things people do to be able to come back into a project after interruptions.
It’s very liberating to find workflows where you can actually get stuff done even in small increments, because you are not relying on this idea of doing a hard reset of your mind every time you switch tasks
EDIT: to be clear, it’s good to let people work uninterrupted. Sometimes interruptions are needed because of working in a company where other people also have needs. This is true of many people working at a company, and so we should operate understanding interruptions exist and we are the same as other people.