The fact that I have more than 20 missed phone calls on my land line telephone after only half a day has passed triggers me to write this blog post.
It is simply impossible to get any productive work done if there are synchronous interruptions. If I'm doing any even remotely complex task such as analyzing code, designing electronics or whatever else, then the interruption of the flow of thoughts, and the context switch to whatever the phone call might be about is costing me an insurmountable amount of my productive efficiency. I doubt that I am the only one having that feeling / experience.
So why on earth does everybody think they are entitled to interrupt my work at any given point in time they desire? Why do they think whatever issue they have rectifies an immediate interruption in what I am doing? To me, an unscheduled phone call almost always feels like an insult. It is a severe intrusion into my work-flow, and has a very high cost to me in terms of loss of productivity.
Sure, there are exceptional absolute emergencies (like, a medical emergency of a family member). But just about anything else can be put in an e-mail, which I can respond to at a time of my choosing, i.e. at a time I am not deeply buried into some other task that requires expensive context switching and the associated loss of productivity. And yes, a response might be the same day, some days later, or even a week or more later. There are literally hundreds of mails of dozens of people that need to be responded to. I can never even remotely answer all of them in a timely manner, even if I'm working 12-14 hours a day up to 7 days a week.
Right now I'm doing the only reasonable thing that is left: Switch off all phones. And to anyone out there intending to contact me: Please think twice before calling me on the phone. Almost anything can be put in an e-mail. And if you really want to have a phone call, please request a scheduled phone call in an e-mail containing a very detailed agenda and explanation of the topic.