So my mother calls me at work for something “Important” that probably fits in the 3/10 or 5/10 buckets, which is a blocking I/O event when you’re trying to debug code, eh? This is something anyone out of grade school should understand by now:
- Walking in
- In addition to calling (see below), blocks visual input if face is turned to look at you.
- Calling (E.g. phones, Skype calls, etc).
- Blocks other tasks requiring conversational or non-automated mental function.
- Suitable for urgent matters that demand a response time under five seconds.
- Signal and local state issues may get you ignored to /dev/voicemail.
- Rolling conversations (E.g. from a desk away, over TeamSpeak, etc).
- Blocks either tasks requiring conversational output (responding) and reading comprehension (listening).
- Suitable for when a response time under 15 seconds is okay and you can repeat something.
- Messaging (E.g. instant message, text/SMS message).
- Suitable for when response time under 5 minutes is ideal but not urgent.
- Temporarily blocks text output ON writing a response.
- Electronic post (E.g. e-mail, forum PM, etc).
- Suitable for when response time of 2-5 hours is okay.
- Minimal obstruction when response is uneeded and notification can wait.
- Snail Mail
- When it involves something you can’t digitize.
- Risk of being ignored is acceptable.
In most cases, “Response time” in the above can be replaced with time of notification as well, should you be conveying news. Case for 1: the building is on fire! Case for 5: you need to do ${task} tomorrow.
This is what it is like to deal with someone exercising grey matter. Programmers, copy readers, writers, etc.