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.
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.
A reasonable model.
> Maybe what we need is...
I think Cal Newport belongs to the "intermittent hermit" school of thought...
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.