You can often shorten this to, “can you come back in fifteen minutes?” This is less likely for them to try to pick your brain about whether their problem is urgent or not.
Of course it depends on who is asking. If the head of IT is standing there, and you don’t usually hear from IT, then it could be something bad. If your intern looks like they just set the building on fire, also might be important.
The chain was basically:
a) ping them over IM. Do not grenade them with your problem. Ask first if they have time to help you:
No? Try fixing your problem on your own for another 20-30 minutes.
Yes? Be short and to the point. If its a coding issue, list all of the solutions you've tried first and what the issue is.
Allow the person you are asking to set the parameters of the help:
a) how fast can this be done? Can I do this over IM?
b) does this need a webex or meeting to figure out?
c) how much time will the meeting require to solve problem? Estimate and go from there.
d) do any of the previous infringe on your current work? Have a person set up a meeting for later in the day and then leave them alone.
It was literally taboo to go to someone's desk and ask them for help. It was hammered into people that work comes first and any distraction costs time and money. Even when you go over and tap someone on the shoulder? They have to mentally disengage with their work to speak to you. That's precious time they are losing. Same thing after they've completed even a 5 min conversation, they have to get back to whatever they were doing which also takes time. There was some study that said just a handful of these interruptions can cause a company millions. When you're at a startup, every dollar wasted costs the bottom line.
This wouldn't work with me. I don't respond until I know what I'm saying yes to.
If you prefer to eat lunch alone, adjust accordingly. I was providing loose guidance, not a strict prescription.
The hard thing is that it's not easy to explain critical job' result to the team. Most people simply think that's [my] job.
The very annoying thing to me is that people tend to ask via PM. Why don't they just ask question on common group where there are a lot of people in the team can help? Oh... that's then Slack @here and @channel are problems. They are using that too much, and people don't care anymore lolz
My rule of thumb is 15 minutes. I also never send "Hi XYZ" alone and then form a question. "Hi" is part of question message (Shift+Enter ftw!) and often while forming the question sentence with some guiding information I manage to find an answer too. No message send, win-win.
Later I started being more assertive about my time.
Meeting request in the middle of my core work hours? Decline as busy, suggest to move it to a lunch meeting or offer to call the person after working hours (Everyone chooses lunch meeting instead of after hours).
People tapping me on the shoulder to ask a question while I'm wearing headphones? Before they can speak, I politely say that I'm in the middle of something I need to finish and ask if it's urgent. It's rarely urgent, but people quickly learn that it doesn't pay off to interrupt me.
Constant deluge of Slack messages? I set a status that I was busy but would be available to chat during certain hours. When I'm pinged, I quickly respond that I'm in the middle of something but I'll get back to them later.
The key was to realize that taking charge of my own time didn't have the negative consequences I thought it would. In my mind, I thought declining people's meeting invites or refusing to prioritize other people's demands would end my career, so I let people walk all over my schedule. Reality couldn't have been further from the truth. Nearly everyone was very understanding and very few people interpreted my responses as rude. Obviously you need to be polite and professional, no matter how aggravating the interruptions are.
Carving out dedicated meeting and socializing time was also important. It's unlikely that I'm going to sit in one place for 8 straight hours anyway, so allocating two blocks of time each day for meetings and catching up was helpful. Making it predictable and communicating it to others made it easy for everyone else to understand. I even marked it on my shared calendar.