
Ask HN: Do You Get Interrupted at Work? - bobbiechen
Specifically, face-to-face interruptions while you&#x27;re working - do people walk up to you and ask questions, or tap you on the shoulder? Does it break your concentration? How do you deal with this?<p>I&#x27;m working on a project related to this and it would help a lot to hear about your experiences through the survey or the comment section here.<p>Here&#x27;s a survey link if you have a few minutes: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forms.gle&#x2F;syL1XrLAauxd57hr7
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bobbiechen
My personal experience: I'm usually the most junior person on the team, so I
don't get a lot of interruptions personally. But it seems the more experience
you have, the more questions - including face-to-face ones - people have for
you.

I'll often Slack someone who sits right by me instead of just calling their
name, because the Slack message is a lot easier to ignore if they are busy.
It's virtually always something that doesn't require an immediate, synchronous
response, so I don't mind waiting.

(also, clickable survey link -
[https://forms.gle/syL1XrLAauxd57hr7](https://forms.gle/syL1XrLAauxd57hr7) )

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JohnFen
Yes, frequently. Although I prefer that to being interrupted by instant
messaging.

I learned how to cope with this many years ago. I developed a habit (meaning I
don't even really notice that I do this anymore, so it doesn't break my
concentration) that if someone is trying to interrupt me while I'm "in the
flow", I'll just raise my hand up to them, a bit like "talk to the hand". They
know this means go away and come back later, or send me an email.

In any other circumstance, I am very responsive to people.

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tpmx
Since you seem to be doing some kind of study on the topic:

What I often feel is missing from the equation is the alternative cost: What
value is lost from having a culture where it's not socially okay to interrupt
a colleague?

I think any model that doesn't take this into consideration is mostly
pointless.

The goal should be to identify the optimal number of interruptions. Obviously
that's super hard to define, since it's all so dependent on so much
state/knowledge etc in people's minds.

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bobbiechen
Right - I'm not saying that all interruptions are bad. But I do think
unbounded interruptions is very likely to incur more cost than it's worth.

Something is on fire and you need my help now, so definitely interrupt. But on
the other hand, is it possible to create a culture where you email/Slack first
for something unimportant, and tap on shoulders only if unacknowledged for
some time? Or as in the Paul Graham "schedules" essay [1], try to chunk face-
to-face questions into clear blocks of office hours?

I think the face-to-face case is important because it's much harder to "set
your status to do-not-disturb" in the physical world.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html)

