The cost of a startup
I am not talking about the cost of a coffee bar complete with barista, two old arcade machines, some bean bags, a table-tennistable, maybe one desk with a MacBook Pro on it to do some work as you attract the new edgy hispster software engineers that only write the latest trending obscure esoteric languages.
No I am simply talking about the cost of starting up your task. The run up before you execute or when you are interrupted to get going again.
Start running
So before I have to start a task it will cost me some energy to actually get me going. How high that threshold is depends on some aspects of the task at hand. How much I already know about the tech I use, how depressed I am, how motivated I was in the first place, how my morning commute was, what day of the week, how much caffeine is currently in my bloodstream, how well I want to finish the task, what level of quality I need to deliver, what level of quality I feel I have to deliver, what percentage of the working day has already elapsed, to name a few.
So the higher the threshold the more I am like a diesel locomotive where it takes me a while to get going but once I get going I am costlessly doing the work as efficiently as possible.
Now I usually get interrupted at any point during my execution of a task. The cost then to start again depends where I am on the scale of progress of completion of the task in combination with the initial threshold.
Start running again
If you have to start up again it can be quite costly in the beginning and grow exponentially with every subsequent interruption of your work. In addition to this it just aggravates me beyond reason the more frequently I get interrupted by different people in serial.
If you are in the middle then it might cost a little less and even less when you are almost done. The initial threshold might still apply though.
Avoiding ad-hoc
So in order to avoid this ad-hoc nonsense of everyone is important except you, what I did is plan in a block for allowing and denying ad-hoc questions.
So early morning you are allowed to ask ad-hoc things and if it does not fit that morning then it will be planned for next day. The midday is fully focused blocked off section of time for me to get my diesel locomotive started.