If you’ve ever worked a technical role in any kind of office environment, without a doubt you’ve had to deal with interruptions at inconvenient times. Even moreso in the ever-popular open plan environment.

As most people in a technical role, by which I mean specifically tech industry roles, and likely many others have found, an open plan office is the exact opposite of efficient when it comes to being able to focus and get work done.

I know I’m not alone in coming to the realization that working from home for half a day is easily as good, if not more productive, than an entire day in a noisy open plan office.

Honestly, at this point, the only reason for me to be in the office is for social reasons, or business networking. I haven’t quite yet worked out an efficient way to do this over email, chat, or video calls. Office politics seems to be best played in person.

Regardless of this, there are many tech companies – the one I work for included – that very much prefer to see people “working” in the office. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this still seems to be evidence to some managers that their staff are “doing their jobs”.

There are many reasons that people put up with this kind of environment, that is not the point of this post. While a lot of people are completely mobile, many aren’t. For a number of valid reasons. Some are yet to realize their value, and ability to easily move to a better environment. Some are simply lazy, and want to cruise in a role where they don’t need to over-perform & compete – largely due to better staff leaving.

Personally, I have one of those valid reasons. Those who know me know what it is, those who don’t … don’t.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time watching mobile, competent colleagues move in & out of the company. It’s hard to watch, and hard to deal with as they move on to greener pastures, and leave those remaining to train their replacements. I don’t at all blame them for this.

So the way the cards currently lie, I’m a long-serving senior engineer at my company, and as one of the many hats I’ve acquired, I regularly mentor junior staff, and even senior staff that are new to our environment. This results in a lot of interruption on any given day. Since I’ve also been around longer than exactly ALL of our executive team, and almost all of our upper management, I also get tapped for information on a regular basis from those above me. It’s a slightly weird situation, but it’s definitely giving me opportunities to push myself that I likely wouldn’t get elsewhere.

Obviously, this results in constant interruptions, from all corners of the business. Context switching consumes a large proportion of the average day for me. For example, overnight security escalations bright and early, followed by a chunk of tool dev work, and ending the day with building some finance-related powerpoint slides that will be presented to the board. With usual daily work & interruptions all throughout.

I’ve gone through a few iterations of trying to fend of interruptions. I’ve tried working out of a conference room, wearing headphones all day, putting up signs saying I’m busy, blocking out my calendar.

The only (mostly) successful way I’ve found to avoid interruptions is to simply not be in the office environment.

As a result of this, I’ve learned to deal with constant context switching. Most people who interrupt me now know to start the conversation with the platform, customer, and department they need to discuss. This was a major struggle to get people to do this, I felt like a dick for a long time. Everytime someone would interrupt me & ask a question I would stare at them blankly for a few seconds as my brain switched gears and then have to ask them to repeat the question with the relevant information front and center.

I don’t know too many people that are in such a weird position as I am currently. I have yet to fully determine if it is a good experience or not. Many times it leaves me fried at the end of the day, which is definitely not good.

It was only very recently that I came to the conclusion that it is likely this constant context switching and constant interruption that is causing me to be exhausted all the time, and I’m still looking at ways to address it properly. Exercise helps. Being outside helps. Working less probably would if I could work out how to do that. Alcohol helps in the VERY short term, but rapidly makes it worse. I don’t recommend it as a long-term fix.

And yes, I recognize some of these are signs of burnout. I fully believe that is a legitimate thing, and am aware of, and actively trying to mitigate it in my daily life. I’ve come to the realization there is more than a little cross-over between this post & the many posts people have written about burnout. I’m not sure I can add to those in any meaningful way, but if I can, it will likely become a post at some point

For the moment I am not mobile, but this may change sometime later this year, and then I’ll hopefully be able to properly address the issues I’m facing, but until then …

How do YOU deal with constant interruptions? I’d love any advice people have, and certainly open to any ideas that would allow me to have more of a life outside work where my brain isn’t totally fried at the end of the day.