I became the person everyone Slacks first and now I can't get two hours of focus time in a row
Somewhere in the last year I became the person people DM first instead of checking the docs or the wiki. Doesn't matter if it's about the auth service I touched two years ago or how to set up the staging env, my name is the first suggestion in the channel. I used to think that meant I was doing well. Now I look at my calendar and there's maybe ninety minutes some days where nobody needs anything from me, and I spend half of that just recovering from context switching. I tried blocking off focus time on my calendar and got three meeting requests scheduled right on top of it that same week. I don't know how to say no without sounding like I don't want to help, because honestly I do want to help, I just also want to ship my own stuff before Friday.
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AnonymousAnon Some of that visibility compounds though. I hated the DMs too but being the go-to person is a big part of why I got considered for staff this cycle.
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AnonymousAnon This was me at my last job. I started answering with a link to the runbook before anything else and the interruptions dropped by half almost overnight.