Haven't we all called bullshit on our collective addiction to constant connectivity? We've become a society of twitchy, notification-obsessed zombies, and it's high time we admit to Houston, "we have a problem."
Say you've finally carved out two hours for deep work. You're ready to dive in, synapses firing, creativity flowing; coffee at the ready! But twelve minutes in, Slack erupts like a digital volcano. Forty minutes later, your inbox screams for attention. And just when you think you're safe, Milton materializes at your door, probably to ask where you keep the red Swingline stapler.
Congratulations! You've just experienced the modern workday equivalent of death by a thousand paper cuts. And we wonder why we can't get anything substantial done.
What if we told the world to pop off (I'm being nice on word choice) for a couple of hours?
I'm not talking about time-blocking. We all know how to color-code our calendars like deranged kindergarteners. I'm talking about erecting barricades around our focus time that would make the French Revolutionaries proud.
Enter the concept of "necessary friction." It's time to throw some sand in the gears of the Great Distraction Machine. Shut down Slack like you're pulling the plug on a life support system. Close your email tab and party like it's 1995. If you have a door, shut it and pull down the blinds. Now tell people that if they absolutely, positively must reach you, they'll have to resort to that archaic ritual known as a phone call. Remember those? When your voice actually had to travel through the airwaves to the eardrum of someone who was ...(hold).... listening!
You'd be amazed how many "urgent" messages suddenly become less pressing when people have to dial a number. It's like we've all developed a phobia of actually talking to each other. God forbid we have a conversation that goes beyond the tiny bit of information we seek.
But why stop there? Get creative with your friction. Set up an email auto-responder that says you're only available for matters involving spontaneous human combustion or alien invasions. Create a Microsoft Teams status that suggests carrier pigeons as an alternative form of communication. Funny thing is, I've tried this with my friend Dave and he actually sent me a message by carrier pigeon. Hell, hire a butler to stand outside your office and challenge visitors to a duel if they want to interrupt you.
I can hear the pushback. "But what if there's an emergency?" Newsflash: If your workplace has so many emergencies that you can't focus for two hours, you're not running a business; you're running a dumpster fire. And let's be honest, most of these "emergencies" are about as urgent as deciding what to have for lunch. A study by Gloria Mark at UC Irvine found that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on task after an interruption. So every time you check that "urgent" Slack message, you're basically setting fire to half an hour of your day. Burn baby burn!
Unless you are an EMT, your job isn't to be an always-on, real-time response machine. Your job is to do your best work. Sometimes, doing your best work means telling the rest of the world to take a number and wait their damn turn. Can you do that? Can you say, "no, not right now," and run the risk of disappointing someone?
Next time you block off time for deep work, don't just draw a line in the sand; dig a friggin moat, fill it with sharks, and electrify the water. Make it so inconvenient for people to interrupt you that they'd rather decipher the Voynich manuscript than try to get your attention.
Will people get pissed off? Probably.
Will they call you difficult? Almost certainly.
But you know what? Let them.
While they're busy being outraged, you'll be busy actually getting shit done.
It's time we all grew a spine and started protecting our productivity like it's the last slice of pizza at a frat party. Because if we don't, we're going to wake up one day and realize we've spent our entire careers reacting to other people's demands instead of actually creating anything of value.
So go ahead, add some friction. Be unavailable. Be difficult. Be the pebble in the shoe of constant connectivity. Your future self, swimming in the deep end of uninterrupted productivity, will thank you for it. Maybe, by making ourselves a little less available, we'll all start to appreciate the value of focus and deep work. Or maybe we'll all just end up talking to each other through a series of elaborate smoke signals. Either way, it's got to be better than death by a thousand Slack pings.
