Silent focus does not work.
You close the chat,
you turn off the badges,
you get thirty good minutes.
Meanwhile three people
have messaged you.
One of them needed a yes
and could not get it.
One asked someone else
and got a worse answer.
One decided
something must be wrong
and walked over
to find out.
You come back to a small mess
that exists
entirely because
nobody knew where you were.
Unavailability is not the problem.
Unpredictable unavailability
is the problem.
A colleague can wait two hours
without any stress at all,
as long as they know
it is two hours.
What they cannot do
is wait an unknown time
for an unknown reason,
because then waiting
starts to feel like a risk,
and they escalate
to protect themselves.
So say it out loud.
Heads down until eleven.
Back on messages after that.
If it is on fire, call me.
Three short sentences,
posted where people look,
and the entire dynamic changes.
The escape hatch is what makes it work.
Without it you are asking
your team to gamble.
With it you are offering a trade,
and most people take the trade
happily.
Then honour the other half,
which is the part people skip.
Be genuinely there at eleven.
Answer everything that queued up.
Answer it properly,
not with the distracted
half-sentence
of someone still
inside the other task.
Reliability at the stated time
is what buys you
the silence before it.
Do this for a few weeks
and something quiet happens.
Other people start doing it.
The team learns
that a block of unreachable time
is a normal, announced,
unremarkable thing,
rather than a small act
of rebellion
that has to be hidden.
It also protects the person
who is worst at this,
which might be you
on a bad week.
An announced window
has an end.
A vague disappearance
has no end,
and quietly turns into
a day you cannot account for.
Focus is usually described
as a private virtue.
Most of the time
it is an agreement
you never got around
to making.
Make it out loud.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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