No, your door shouldn’t be always open.
If you’ve ever found yourself coming in early or staying late just to get some uninterrupted work done, you’re not alone. When the workday is full of constant pings, pop-ins, and “quick questions,” focused work gets pushed to the edges of the day. The only way to get any thinking done is before the interruptions start or after they’ve stopped!
Too many business owners have just accepted this as normal.
While that kind of all-access availability might feel like you’re helping your team in the moment, it comes at a steep cost in the long run.
What “Gotta Minute” Actually Costs
1 – Time and Energy
Frequent interruptions don’t just eat away at your time. They gobble your energy and reduce the attention available for more important tasks. Studies have shown that it can take 10-20 minutes or more to refocus after being interrupted. Multiply that across a day’s worth of interruptions, and it adds up quickly.
2 – Decision Bottleneck
Interruptions also keep you stuck in the weeds. If every decision has to go through you, guess what? You’ve created a bottleneck. That slows the whole business down.
3 – Stalled Team Growth
And perhaps most importantly, interruptions can hold your team back. If you’re constantly stepping in to solve problems or bail someone out, you’re not challenging your team to think critically and take ownership. This rescuer/victim dynamic becomes a habit, and your future leaders never build the muscle of figuring things out for themselves.
Reclaim Your Workday Focus
There are some instances where you want to be interrupted – like when the building’s on fire or your best customer needs a little white-glove treatment – but we can reduce unnecessary interruptions with smart, system-level tweaks to how work gets done.
Here’s what I recommend:
Batch the small stuff with regular check-ins.
A business needs a predictable communication rhythm. Yours could include a daily huddle and weekly 1-on-1s or team meetings, for example. The goal is to train people to batch their non-urgent questions and bring them to the meeting. You can still capture on-the-fly ideas and questions on a whiteboard or shared doc, but there’s no need to bring them to you in real time.
Teach your team to think like a boss.
When someone brings you a question, resist the urge to answer right away. Create good friction by asking questions back. “What have you tried?” “What do you recommend?” This can feel slow, but in the long run it builds confidence, develops critical thinking, and shifts the culture from problem-passing to problem-solving.
Treat your business like your favourite client, and give it your full attention.
If you were in a meeting with your best, most profitable client, you wouldn’t take random interruptions or pause to take a call. So what else on your task list deserves that intensity of focus? Have a visual cue for deep work (closed door, headphones, sign on the desk) and set clear expectations for when you can and can’t be interrupted.
Protect your time by blocking off a regular “power hour”
Imagine an hour a day with no email, no phone, no knocks at the door. Just focused work on your business instead of in it. If that feels impossible, start with one or two hours per week… you’ll be surprised at how much you get done. Block it off in your calendar and protect it.
When interruptions are unavoidable, make a “Ready to Resume” plan
When faced with a truly necessary interruption, take one minute to quickly jot down where you were in your work and what you wanted to do next. This will help you re-focus more quickly, and it will also improve your performance on the interrupting task because you’ll have cleared the mental load of trying to remember where you were.
This Week’s Takeaway
You don’t need to accept constant interruptions as the cost of doing business. Ask yourself:
What system-level or structural changes would reduce the number or frequency of non-urgent interruptions?
And the painful question:
Where have you been complicit in creating a culture of constant access?
Because you don’t need to be available at all times to be a good boss. In fact, protecting your focus might be one of the best things you can do for your business.
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