Reading through the comments here, and in the ton of similar threads on this subject, I feel I must be such an outlier...
For me there are different tasks and different days. Some days I want uninterrupted flow. But some days I feel more productive by chopping it up with a few meetings and some office trash talk. A laugh every now and then, teasing a co-worker for screaming at his code - it gives energy to me. Talking through a problem or pausing for a while in a meeting and then returning to it - that can be a great way to see new things.
Now don't get me wrong here, I am not saying meetings and distractions are good for everybody. But it's just that for me at least the picture is not as clear. Some days I feel I would have been more productive if I had had some meetings to distract me.
I usually split my work-week in office and remote work. When I am in office I plan for having meetings with stakeholders, architecture/mob coding with my coworkers, etc.
But when I am at home I can focus on the projects I need to execute on, fairly uninterrupted.
It is not perfect and isn't quite as black and white as it may seem, and it is difficult to communicate that this is how you're working, but just doing it in my org has been pretty good.
I probably have one of the more outreaching roles, some mix between an architect and devrel with a sprinkle of actual execution, so even if it is an outreach kind of role it actually works pretty well.
I have a similar feeling. For some work I need to focus, but the "why don't we scrap this idea for one that does the same thing in 1/10 the code"-moments have mostly been in and between meetings and office chatter.
For me there are different tasks and different days. Some days I want uninterrupted flow. But some days I feel more productive by chopping it up with a few meetings and some office trash talk. A laugh every now and then, teasing a co-worker for screaming at his code - it gives energy to me. Talking through a problem or pausing for a while in a meeting and then returning to it - that can be a great way to see new things.
Now don't get me wrong here, I am not saying meetings and distractions are good for everybody. But it's just that for me at least the picture is not as clear. Some days I feel I would have been more productive if I had had some meetings to distract me.
Am I really the only one to feel this way?