Why Deep Work Gets Hijacked Before the Week Even Starts

Every Monday, I’d sit down and map out an ambitious to-do list, the kind that promised a productive week if I could just stay disciplined. By Friday, though, most of the big tasks were still sitting there. Carried over, untouched or half-finished. The only consistent thing was that the week’s priorities kept rolling forward like leftover laundry.

For way too long, I blamed myself. Was it just poor time management? Not enough discipline? I kept telling myself that if I just focused harder, I’d get more done.

But here’s the truth. This role isn’t about ticking things off lists. It’s firefighting. Every day is shaped by surprises, shifting needs, and whatever pops up at 10 a.m. You wake up thinking you’ll make headway, and by noon it’s already a scramble.

Meetings stack up before you know it, making it harder to make time for deep work. Slack pings, “quick calls”—my attention spent the day being hijacked by interruptions instead of the work that actually matters. Inefficient meetings are the top barrier to productivity, and 68% of employees don’t get enough uninterrupted focus time during the workday. If you’ve felt this, it’s not just you. The environment’s wired for distraction.

Here’s what it comes down to. Reactive inputs fill every open space you let them. Deep work never happens by accident. If you don’t protect deep work time and defend your time, interrupt-heavy roles won’t leave you much to show for your week.

The Mechanics: Why Multitasking Isn’t Strategy—It’s Survival

Every time a Slack ping pops up or my calendar flashes with yet another meeting invite, I picture my mind as a computer processor. Each interruption? That’s a forced reload. Yanked out of one project and into another context completely. It’s not just about shifting tabs. Every mental jump burns time and chips away at the quality of my work. Unproductive workplace chat drains 157 hours of focus per year—the biggest culprit for lost attention source. It happens so quickly that most weeks I don’t realize how much was actually lost.

Most days end up as a blur of half-finished threads, stacks of emails, and tasks layered so fast my brain barely keeps up. I wasn’t multitasking by choice. It was survival. Reacting to chaos, not engineering a plan. Stacking new tasks on top of each other uses up cognitive resources fast, often leaving too little left to create focus source.

Then I hit Stephane’s post—a wake-up call. Honestly, six months ago I still believed doing more at once was a mark of effectiveness. But his framing was blunt and convincing. “Multitasking isn’t productivity.” That simple line forced me to rethink what I valued about my workdays.

The core principle landed hard. Reactive inputs expand to fill any unguarded space. If you don’t protect time for deep work, it won’t happen. Intent gets buried in a sea of quick wins and unanswered requests. Protecting focus isn’t optional—it’s a necessity in this environment, and it has to be deliberate.

Here’s the leadership moment. Sustained focus turns your intent into outcomes that actually ship. Not just another week of responsive chatter. If you want progress, you can’t leave deep work time to chance.

Make Time for Deep Work: Building a Repeatable Framework

You don’t find time—you make it. Deep work isn’t hiding in calendar gaps or leftover mornings. If you want real progress, you have to carve out and defend the time on purpose.

I block 90 to 120 minutes to make time for deep work, usually before the day can start taking its own shape. Early hours are best—less inbound noise, fewer “quick questions.” I set my Slack status to do-not-disturb, mark the block like a meeting (not “free” or “tentative”), and refuse to treat it as optional. If a calendar invite lands on top, it gets moved. Not the deep work.

Boundaries around inbound requests are just as critical. I stick to specific triage windows (pre-lunch and late afternoon) for Slack and email, with clear escalation paths for true emergencies. That way, small asks and “quick calls” don’t worm into my focus blocks. Admittedly, saying no to non-urgent interruptions took practice. The first few times feel awkward, but it’s the only way to protect attention and reduce context switching.

I added a micro-ritual too. Two minutes before each block, I set up my workspace, review the backlog, and schedule deep work blocks by writing my top priority on paper. After deep work, I jot down what I achieved—just a couple of lines. That tiny log helps reinforce momentum and keeps the progress visible, even when the rest of the day goes sideways.

Responsiveness Without Chaos: How Focus Restores Reliability

The first question I always hear is, won’t all this focus kill my availability? In engineering leadership, deep work for managers can feel at odds with being reachable, which seems like half the job. Honestly, I used to worry about that too. But here’s the reframing—the whole point of protecting deep work isn’t to make you unresponsive. It’s to stop the cycle of rework and last-minute scrambling. When you’re constantly interrupted, you actually miss more, or answer requests only halfway. It’s a myth that endless availability breeds reliability. In reality, framing cuts down back-and-forth, which stabilizes outputs and makes your responses sharper.

So, what’s worked for me? I set up explicit lanes for inbound requests. For routine things—Slack pings, quick emails—I publish times when I’ll triage and reply, usually late mornings and before day’s end. Everyone knows those windows exist, so the “is this urgent?” guessing game disappears. For deeper dives, feedback, or knotty problem-solving, I run office hours: two blocks per week where my attention is genuinely on collaboration, not split five ways. And for true emergencies—fire alarms, urgent production issues—I make it clear people can call or SMS, no questions asked. The system is public, simple, and covers the range. Slack for the regular stuff, office hours for real depth, phone for the rare criticals.

If you need a line to set boundaries, keep it direct. “Thanks for flagging—can we sync during office hours?”, “Let’s schedule this after my current focus block,” and “For urgent issues, you can always reach me by phone.”

Here’s what shifts. The interruptions drop, people get answers when they actually matter, and you stop leaking attention on stray, non-urgent asks. The result wasn’t less responsiveness—if anything, it got cleaner. I used to worry about seeming unavailable, but what changed was that my responses became more predictable and more useful. Turns out, clearer lanes don’t just protect focus. They actually raise the bar on service. I still haven’t shaken the urge to check Slack immediately when I see something pop up—but now it sits there until triage. Progress, even if it isn’t perfect.

Measuring, Adapting, and Defending Deep Work

Start by tracking two things. The actual hours you guard focus time, and the concrete artifacts shipped from your backlog. You don’t have to overcomplicate it—just log the time you kept guarded, and note what really got across the finish line that ties to your priorities. Making these numbers visible (even if you’re the only one looking) is a huge nudge to stay consistent.

Friday is the pulse-check. I open my Monday list, line up what was planned against what shipped, and quickly sketch out what derailed the blocks that didn’t happen. If the same priorities keep slipping, that’s my invite to tweak next week’s calendar. Sometimes all it takes is moving a meeting or doubling down on do-not-disturb.

I won’t pretend this runs perfectly every week. Recurring meetings sit like rocks in the calendar, ad-hoc calls still sneak through, and unclear priorities creep back in just when you think you’ve solved them. When things start slipping, I look for patterns: can I combine or drop any standing meetings, or switch some to async? Are my request-response scripts too soft to actually carve out focus? Maybe the backlog itself needs a quick cleanup to clarify what’s genuinely urgent and what can wait. It’s not just about tightening the system, but tuning it to where the friction is real. Not just where I wish it was.

The truth is, deep work will never spring up by accident. You have to make it, defend it, and let it add up over time. Because in this role, that’s what builds credibility and turns intent into something you can actually point to and say: “that shipped because I cared enough to protect the space.”