Posted on: June 9, 2025
There’s a kind of focus developers crave — when the world fades, code flows, and suddenly it’s three hours later and you forgot to eat.
That state isn’t luxury. For developers, it’s survival.
We juggle call stacks, models, APIs, integrations… and then someone pops in with a question. Or a joke. Or “just one quick thing.”
And the whole thing collapses.
Steve McConnell once said: “A five-minute interruption can cost an hour of productivity.” Because it’s not just time — it’s rebuilding mental state from fragments.
The worst part? Most interruptions are valid. Managers need updates. Colleagues need input. Even your spouse might want to know what’s for dinner. (Mine seems to sense the exact moment I load the full mental model. Every time.)
But we’re not living in a bunker. And we can’t build serious work in a state of constant context loss.
Every context switch — Slack ping, email, slow build that sends your brain wandering — has a price. And flow doesn’t come back instantly.
Protecting it starts small. A quiet “Not now — I’m debugging” can work wonders. But only if you believe your time matters. This isn’t about being rude. It’s about shipping real work.
At the team level, flow needs advocates. Someone to reroute external noise. Set focus hours. Cut junk meetings. Create space to think — and defend it.
I once moved devs into a separate room — and relocated the PO to the customer floor (ritual sacrifice, you could say). We rerouted all incoming requests through proxies: support rotation, PO, wiki. No more “closet drop-ins.”
The result? The team didn’t just speed up — they transformed. Same people, same tools — but focus came back. And with it: trust, energy, and flow.
Protecting flow says something loud: “Your time matters.” That message sticks. People lean in. They respect each other’s time too.
Flow is fragile — but powerful. And defending it doesn’t take a budget. Just intention. A bit of discipline. And maybe a door that closes.
PS: Don’t forget to protect your own flow, too. Even if your spouse has root access to your brain :)
Written by Ilya Komakhin