Agree - as someone in the position where I do need to respond urgently to some messages, I find it very helpful for chat to interrupt me. For that to be product

Agree - as someone in the position where I do need to respond urgently to some messages, I find it very helpful for chat to interrupt me. For that to be productive, the interruptions need to be meaningful. Saying "no interruptions" doesn't solve my problem. And I do get some blocks of time when I can ignore all interruptions, in which case I just don't even open chat, instead of having it open and disabling notifications. (My job isn't weird; I'm an SRE on a support rotation. When I'm on support I need to see things urgently; when I'm not I can focus on project work and escalations can take the form of someone finding me and pulling the headphones off my ears if needed.) More fundamentally, not being around on the medium that most people at your company use in order to focus on project work is a great way to get left behind in terms of being aware of what the business is doing and what it values. People will slowly see you as the person who's great at finishing their own projects but not usefully responsive, and start treating you that way. Including when trying to assign new projects or during performance review season.