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: