Your attention isn’t public property.

The default assumption is that anybody may have some of it: a notification, a question, a request to look at something for a second. That assumption is worth examining, because attention is the one thing you cannot get back, and most of what competes for it is competing commercially. Access is something you grant, not something people hold by right.

Start treating it as yours. Decide what gets it today and let the rest wait, which nearly everything can. One hour where nothing is allowed in will show you how much of a normal day goes to other people’s priorities.