How the hierarchy of attention affects deep work

I’ve talked about the hierarchy of attention on here a variety of times. When communicating with people, different types of communication imply different types of urgency, with a phone call meaning “ I need your attention right this moment “. That’s not always ideal.

We all have times during the day when we’re really focused in on a problem or idea, with a million things going through our head, and then a brief interruption destroys it all. This comic from Jason Heeris shows it well:

It requires a bit of sonder to think about this before you pick up the phone (or Slack or Snapchat or whatever you use) to ask someone a “quick question”. That 30 second question could take the other person 20 minutes to recover from and get back to that headspace. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, and it’s something I’m working on.

This is why, despite all of the great technology out there today, that email is still ideal for a lot of communication. If it’s urgent, certainly call me. If it can wait a little while, though, send me an email and I’ll get back to you in a few hours.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on April 14, 2021.