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.
"Let Me Get Back to You"
I used to feel obligated to answer every question immediately. Now I'm comfortable saying "I'm deep in something right now - can I get back to you in an hour?"
Ninety percent of the time, that's fine. The other ten percent, if it's actually urgent, they'll tell me.
Focus Blocks That People Actually Respect
Here's what doesn't work: generic "focus time" calendar blocks. Here's what does: being specific about what you're doing.
Instead of blocking "focus time," I write "Debugging deployment issue - available after 3 PM." People respect that way more than a vague time block.
The Hard Truth About Change
Here's what nobody wants to admit: most interruptions happen because we've trained people to interrupt us. Every time we drop everything to answer a non-urgent message, we reinforce that interrupting works.
Breaking this cycle means disappointing people who expect immediate responses. It means some people might think you're less collaborative. It means accepting that you can't be helpful to everyone all the time.
But the alternative is never getting anything meaningful done.
I spent years being the "responsive" person - always available, always dropping what I was doing to help. It felt good to be helpful, but when I looked back at what I'd actually accomplished... the list was pretty thin.
The work I'm most proud of happened during uninterrupted focus time.
Starting Small
If you're used to constant connectivity, going straight to four-hour focus blocks probably won't work. Start smaller.
Try this: pick one hour a day where you turn off notifications and work on your most important task. Just one hour. See how it feels.
Then expand gradually. Maybe it becomes two hours. Maybe you add an afternoon block. Maybe you start batching messages instead of responding in real-time.
The goal isn't to become a hermit - it's to be intentional about when you're collaborative versus focused.
The Bottom Line
We've optimized our workplaces for the appearance of productivity rather than actual productivity. We mistake being busy for being effective and being constantly available for being valuable.
The work that actually matters - creative problem-solving, system design, careful debugging - requires sustained attention. It needs the kind of thinking that can only happen when you're not being interrupted every now an then.
Companies that figure this out will have a massive advantage. While everyone else is stuck in meeting-heavy, interruption-driven chaos, they'll be building better software and attracting better engineers.
Somewhere in your organization right now, someone is trying to solve a hard problem. They're on the verge of a breakthrough, connecting ideas in a way that could make a real difference.
The question is: will they get the uninterrupted time they need to actually do it?
Because that breakthrough - the one that could save your users hours of frustration, or prevent a major outage, or unlock a new revenue stream - it's probably going to happen during a long, uninterrupted focus session. Not in the gaps between Teams messages.
The choice is ours to make, one protected hour at a time.