As a manager, that balance is very hard for me. It's tempting to just put tons of 'Focus Time' blocks, but by being available I'm often able to save a lot of time for my team (and other people in the organization).
I don't actively manage teams anymore, but when I did, I encouraged people to write to me whenever they had questions. I don't know where this is coming from, but I've heard people telling me, "I didn't message you because you weren't online".
I hope more people understand that messaging is asynchronous.
I think I'll try with marking myself as away in Slack more often. The problem is that I still want to optimize for the value of interruptions like you mentioned.
As a manager, that balance is very hard for me. It's tempting to just put tons of 'Focus Time' blocks, but by being available I'm often able to save a lot of time for my team (and other people in the organization).
I don't actively manage teams anymore, but when I did, I encouraged people to write to me whenever they had questions. I don't know where this is coming from, but I've heard people telling me, "I didn't message you because you weren't online".
I hope more people understand that messaging is asynchronous.
I think I'll try with marking myself as away in Slack more often. The problem is that I still want to optimize for the value of interruptions like you mentioned.
Well, I know messaging is asynchronous, so I message them anyway, and they respond when they can. I believe that's the way to go!