It's perhaps more accurate to say there are 'deep work' tasks, and there are 'interrupt driven' tasks, and any job is a combination of both, in various ratios. Often you can't even tell ahead of time whether a given job is going to be mostly one or the other.

Maybe what we need is a system where instant messages are allowed, but it imposes a cost of some kind to the person initiating it, so that it won't be used frivolously. Like the proof-of-work antispam captchas, except it should take ~30 seconds and be just once per conversation (defined as ending when 5 minutes go by without message; first replies are free).

We could also add a social cost by displaying how often each user has used this feature in the past 24 hours, next to their username.

This is a great point. It's really important to recognize the nature of different tasks and to build different habits around them.

As a startup founder, by far my two biggest tasks are customer acquisition and development. The former is interrupt-driven while the latter is emphatically deep work.

Right now, I try to address this by blocking off 4 hours a day for deep work and the rest of the time is available for sales and general operations. It's working okay but the big problem is that I have an added stress of worrying what important customer messages I might be missing during my deep work time.

How about just a phone call (or two, to break through “do not disturb”), or tapping on their shoulder to get their attention? That's what we do when we really need someone right now rather than when they come back up for air in the next hour or two.

That, plus simply being mindful of the meaning of “deep work” and people working in roles that need that kind of concentration.

I don't need an app for this.

If you set Slack to do-not-disturb, people sending a direct message to you will be warned that you won't be notified and might not see it -- but will be given an option to "punch through" the do-not-disturb setting for important, interruption-worthy messages. That seems to largely achieve what you describe.

> It's perhaps more accurate to say there are 'deep work' tasks, and there are 'interrupt driven' tasks, and any job is a combination of both, in various ratios. Often you can't even tell ahead of time whether a given job is going to be mostly one or the other.

A reasonable model.

> Maybe what we need is...

I think Cal Newport belongs to the "intermittent hermit" school of thought...

I think you've hit on something. I like my days to be deep work driven as that's where I feel productivity and satisfaction. But, as my role has expanded I actually need to be interrupt driven. When you're stuck in a cross over period, trying to do deep work while holding the team back due to delays in responses, it gets frustrating.

Thank you for helping me understand this dynamic.

This doesn't seem to be the answer for a scrum team. Often you have questions for other engineers, on your team. A product owner is also not interrupt driven and is hopefully digesting stories or talking to stakeholders.

If engineering/qa/architecture is the question, xp may help.

Everyone, please stop starting your statements with "so."