The task that can wait should not keep interrupting the person who cannot.

Interruptions are usually about the interrupter’s timing, not the work’s urgency. A question that could sit in a message until Thursday gets asked immediately because it is on your mind now, and it lands on someone in the middle of the one thing that genuinely has a deadline. The cost is not the two minutes; it is the twenty it takes them to get back.

Before you interrupt someone this week, ask whether this could travel in writing or wait until you next speak. Collect the small things and deliver them together. Save the tap on the shoulder for what actually cannot wait.