I have recently stepped back into the realm of dealing with leadership and executives. The juxtaposition relative to a bunch of recent programming has made me r

I have recently stepped back into the realm of dealing with leadership and executives. The juxtaposition relative to a bunch of recent programming has made me realize why leaders don't fully understand why interruptions are so difficult - the type of work is fundamentally different. * When dealing with Ops work or leadership, much of my work is thin and wide. In other words, I spend my time on a LOT of different things, but rarely need to deep dive. When I do need to deep dive, I'm looking at a timebox measured in hours. I can be interrupted because none of my thoughts are difficult to rebuild. * When I'm programming, I'm working thin and deep. I have a very narrow problem that requires diving into something very deeply. There are often a lot of little details that are potentially blockers. All of that needs to be in active thinking memory - or at least very close to it. When I get interrupted while programming, those auxiliary details go "poof". Sometimes they're hard, if not impossible to get back.