Thread by @tottinge

If I'm involved in a task and it's not completed yet, then people may want to talk to me about it or ask questions.

Eventually it's done, and there is less reason for people to need my attention on that topic.

So, the more work I have in progress and incomplete, the more reasons people have to talk to me.

When I have a lot of work in flight, and I'm trying to work on something else, then all those conversations will be felt as interruptions in the work I'm doing now.

Someone may occasionally want to talk to me about the design of something long-finished. If I did that work, they'll probably want some help understanding it so that they can repeat or enhance it.

This forms an interesting "law" or "rule" of work.

The more things that are going to be started soon, and the more things in flight at once, the more I'm going to be interrupted.

So if we suffer greatly from interruptions, it is because there are too many reasons to be interrupted. If we did only one thing at a time and worked each to completion then there'd be very few reasons to interrupt the current work.

Every work item that has my name attached to it is an *invitation* to interruption.

The likelihood of interruptions is proportionate to my WIP load.

And there is one more knock-on effect: if everyone else is working on the same topic, then there is only work talk, no interruption.

When we're all loaded up with in-flight work that has dependencies and interactions, like features in the same code base, then interruptions are natural and unavoidable.

Disturbingly, if we all have a lot of work in progress, and a lot of our work is dependent or interactive (like features in a single codebase) then we've built a system that runs on interruption and distraction, squeezing out concentration and focus.