Interruptions at work: protect your calls, still answer clients

An interruption is anything that pulls you off a task you meant to finish, whether it comes from a person, your phone or your own restless hand. You can't get rid of them all. If you sell, you shouldn't try, because a client asking for a price is an interruption you want.

So the aim isn't a quiet day. It's deciding which interruptions get you now, which get you at 11, and which don't get you at all. Start by sorting them, because each kind needs a different fix.

The last row is the one people skip. Plenty of interruptions that feel like they come from outside start with your own hand reaching for the phone. No sign on your desk fixes that one.

The minute it takes to answer a question is the cheap part. The cost is getting your head back into what you were doing, and it adds up fast because interruptions come so often. In a report from June 2025, Microsoft's Work Trend Index said its Microsoft 365 data showed employees interrupted every two minutes during core work hours, 275 times a day, by meetings, emails or chats.

Being interrupted doesn't always make you slower. In a 2008 study by Gloria Mark of the University of California, Irvine, with Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke, people who were interrupted while answering emails finished in less time with no drop in quality. They paid for it in other ways: they reported more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort. Their reading of the results is that people work faster to make up for time they know they'll lose.

There's a second cost that's harder to see. Sophie Leroy calls it attention residue: part of your mind stays on the task you left. In her 2009 experiments, people found it hard to pull their attention off an unfinished task, and their work on the next one suffered.

Here's how that looks in a seller's week:

• You're writing a quote, a message pings, and the quote goes out with last month's price in it.
• You're preparing for a call, someone asks a question, and you walk into the call without the one detail you needed.
• You switch away from a follow-up and never go back to it.

The third one costs the most. A minute lost is a minute, but a call-back that never happens is a deal.

Context switching is moving your attention from one task to another, like going from a call to a quote to a chat and back. Multitasking is trying to do two at once, which in practice means switching very fast.

The American Psychological Association describes experiments published in 2001 by Joshua Rubinstein, Jeffrey Evans and David Meyer, in which young adults switched between tasks like solving maths problems and sorting shapes. They lost time on every switch, and lost more when the tasks were complex or unfamiliar.

For a seller, the worst switch happens during a call. You're typing a WhatsApp reply to one prospect while another is telling you what their budget is. You'll miss half of what they said, and they'll hear it in your voice.

The fix is batching: doing the same kind of work together, so you switch less.

• Calls go in one block, back to back.
• Messages go in two or three short windows a day.
• Quotes and admin get their own block, away from the phone.

The daily sales routine template puts calls first and messages after.

Before you fix anything, find out what's really interrupting you. Keep a tally for one normal working day. Each time you're pulled off a task, write down three things:

• The time.
• Who or what it was: a person, a ping, a client or you.
• Whether an answer an hour later would have been fine.

Count them once the day is done. Circle the two or three sources that came up most, and tick the ones that were fine to wait. Start with those. If one colleague accounts for six interruptions, a single conversation with them fixes more than any app.

Most interruptions are preventable. Do these in order, because each one makes the next easier.

1. Put your blocks on the calendar. Book the call block, the follow-up window and admin time as real events, so a colleague sees "busy" and waits. If you work in Google Calendar, you can see your calls and bookings in one view.
2. Mute the pings during a block. Turn on do not disturb, close the email tab, and keep only the numbers that truly can't wait. If everyone's on that list, nobody is.
3. Pick check times. Read chat and email at set times, say 11, 2 and 5. Anything that can wait an hour can wait for the next check.
4. Tell people your hours, once and plainly: "I'm on calls from 10 to 11:30. Catch me after." Put it in your chat status too.
5. Move the phone. Face down on the desk still counts as within reach. Another room works better.
6. Keep one task open on screen. One document, one client record, nothing else.

Some will still get through, and some should. Decide in five seconds with one question: does this need an answer in the next hour?

• Yes, and it's yours. A hot prospect wants to book today. Stop, handle it, then go back.
• Yes, but it's someone else's job. Help for one minute or point them to the right person.
• No. Give a time and go back to work.

Having the lines ready means you don't have to think about how to say it each time:

If you're not sure, ask the person: "Does this need an answer in the next ten minutes?" Most of the time they'll say no.

You can't always avoid switching, but you can make the way back shorter. Before you turn to the interruption, take ten seconds:

1. Write the next action in one line. Not "working on the proposal" but "paste the pricing table into section 3 and check the total."
2. Add where your head was: "about to ask about the start date."
3. Deal with the interruption.
4. Come back, read the note and do that one action before you reread anything.

That ten seconds saves the five minutes you'd spend working out where you were.

When the interruption is a client and the next step is a follow-up, don't leave it as a thought. In ActivityTracker, make it a task with a date and a reminder before it's due, so the promise survives even if the interruption eats the rest of the morning. And if a client rings in the middle of a focus block, ActivityTracker's focus timer pauses and resumes, so you take the call without losing the minutes you'd already done.

Here's where most advice about interruptions fails a seller. Block everything and you miss the message that becomes a deal. Answer everything the second it arrives and you never finish a task.

The fix is to make your replies predictable, for you and for the client.

• Set two or three reply windows a day, and tell clients when they are: "I reply to messages at 11, 2 and 5. If it's urgent, call me."
• Make one exception: a new enquiry gets an answer within the hour, because someone who just asked is still deciding who to talk to.
• Keep one list of who's waiting on you, ordered by who's waited longest.

Clients rarely mind waiting until 2 when they know 2 is coming. What bothers them is not knowing. If saying it feels cold, borrow the lines in setting boundaries with clients.

Then there's the other kind of interruption: someone cutting across you mid-sentence. What you say back depends on who it is.

A colleague

Keep it light and keep going: "Let me finish this point, then I want to hear yours." If they've taken over the meeting, "I'd like to come back to what I was saying" names it without a fight.

Your manager

Usually let it go in the moment. If it happens every week, raise it privately afterwards: "In meetings, I'd like to finish my point before you add to it. Can we try that?" A private ask lands better than a public correction.

A client

Don't push back. A client who talks over you is usually keen or worried. Let them finish, then answer what they asked. If you need to get a point in, wait for a breath and say, "One thing before I forget."

Whoever it is, don't build a story about their motives. Most interruptions are clumsy, not hostile.

If you run a small team, there's a fair chance you're the biggest interrupter in it. Every "quick question" during a rep's call block costs them more than it costs you.

• Save non-urgent questions for the weekly 1:1. The one-on-one meeting template has a section for them.
• Agree on team call hours when nobody pings anybody, and keep them yourself.
• Use a shared note for questions that don't need an answer today, and check it once a day.

• Microsoft WorkLab, Breaking down the infinite workday (Work Trend Index, 17 June 2025), read 26 October 2026
• Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith and Ulrich Klocke, The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress (CHI 2008), read 26 October 2026
• Sophie Leroy, Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks (2009), read 26 October 2026
• American Psychological Association, Multitasking: switching costs, read 26 October 2026