The Problem of Interruptions

We like to think multitasking makes us efficient, but the opposite is true. Every interruption fractures attention, derails complex thinking, and turns deep work into shallow busywork.

A few days back, I was finally making progress on a nasty bug. You know the kind - where you've got mental models of three different systems loaded in your head, and you can feel yourself getting close to the breakthrough. Then... ping. Teams notification.

"Hey, quick question about the login flow."

I tried to ignore it. Kept debugging. Another ping.

"When you get a sec."

Then another. "No rush, but..."

By the time I caved and answered (because apparently "no rush" means "interrupt whatever you're doing right now"), I'd lost everything. That careful mental scaffolding I'd built up over two hours? Gone. It took me another hour just to get back to where I was.

And you know what the "quick question" was? Something they could have found by reading the Documentation.

This is the reality of modern software development. We've created workplaces that are fundamentally hostile to the kind of deep thinking that actually produces good software. Then we wonder why everything feels rushed, why technical debt keeps piling up, and why our best engineers seem frustrated all the time.

The Multitasking Myth

Let me be blunt here: you can't multitask. Neither can I. Nobody can.

What we call multitasking is really just context switching really fast, and every switch has a cost. It's like running too many applications on a computer with insufficient RAM - everything runs slower because the system keeps swapping things in and out of memory.

I learned this the hard way a while ago during a particularly hellish week where I was trying to:

• Fix a critical bug

• Review code for three different features

• Help junior developers work through blockers

• Answer Teams messages as they came in

By the end of the week, I felt like I'd been working constantly, but couldn't point to a single meaningful thing I'd actually finished. Everything was half-done, partially reviewed, or "almost fixed."

That's when it hit me: trying to do everything means accomplishing nothing.

Why Everything Feels Urgent (But Isn't)

We've created this weird culture where everything feels like an emergency. A question about next week's deployment becomes "urgent." A discussion about button colors becomes "blocking." Someone's inability to find documentation becomes your immediate problem.

The thing is, most urgent things aren't actually urgent. They're just loud.

Last month alone, I got these "urgent" interruptions:

• A question about creating users that were literally documented in the command itself

• A request to review a PR for a feature that wasn't needed for another two weeks

• A "quick sync" about a project nobody had touched in a month

None of these were urgent. But in our always-on culture, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the person doing focused work gets... interrupted.

What Deep Work Actually Looks Like

Real programming - the kind that actually moves things forward - happens in long, uninterrupted blocks. I'm talking about the kind of flow state where you can hold an entire system in your head and see connections that aren't obvious when you're constantly context-switching.

My best debugging sessions have lasted 3-4 hours straight. Same with designing new features or refactoring legacy code. You simply can't do this work in 15-minute chunks between meetings.

But deep work has become almost countercultural. If you're not immediately responsive, people assume you're not working hard. If you block time on your calendar for focused work, someone will schedule a meeting over it because "it doesn't look like you're busy."

The open office trend made this even worse. A few years back, I worked at a place where you could hear every phone call, every lunch discussion, and every time someone got excited about their Food delivery. The theory was collaboration. The reality was that everyone wore headphones and messaged people sitting ten feet away.

The Worst Offenders

"Got a Minute?" (Spoiler: It's Never a Minute)

This might be my biggest pet peeve. Someone walks up with "got a minute?" but what they really mean is "I need you to drop everything and think about my problem right now."

The polite answer is always "sure," but the honest answer should be "that depends - what do you need, and can it wait until I finish this thought?"

The "Emergency" Meeting Culture

Everything needs a meeting, and every meeting is urgent. I've been in emergency meetings to plan other meetings. I've sat through hour-long discussions that could have been resolved with a 30-second Teams message.

My favorite was an meeting about improving meeting efficiency. The irony was apparently lost on everyone.

What Actually Works

After years of frustration, I've found a few things that genuinely work, the key is communicating these expectations upfront and sticking to them.