The Shudder and the Selfishness

The shudder hits you exactly 3 seconds after you press send. That immediate, cold dread that you have just violated your own deeply held philosophical beliefs simply to save yourself the 3 minutes it would have taken to write a proper email. I had done it again. Subject line: ‘Quick Q re: FY23 numbers.’

I am perhaps the most ardent public critic of the ‘quick question’ in professional life, yet there I was, leaning on the crutch of immediate gratification, shifting my disorganized cognitive load onto someone else’s plate. I knew exactly what that Slack message meant to the recipient, whose green dot was currently glaring at me from the corner of my screen: chaos.

The Devastating Mathematics of Interruption

The data, if you bother to look at it, is brutal. When someone interrupts you for a task that feels like it takes 3 minutes, studies show it takes the average person 23 minutes to fully recover their focus.

We are sacrificing an hour of deep output for 3 minutes of immediate, superficial relief. The quick question is not just inefficient; it is the most toxic, focus-shattering force in the modern workplace.

The Unseen Baggage

This is how entire cultures bleed out their creative capacity. And the worst part? The question is almost never quick. It’s a Trojan horse. It lands in your inbox, lightweight and harmless, but hidden inside is a 45-minute impromptu Zoom call involving 5 people who didn’t need to be there, followed by 3 days of unexpected follow-up work.

This is about recognizing the inherent contradiction in high-quality work. We want excellence, but we demand immediate responsiveness. Deep work-the kind that creates lasting value-is fundamentally asynchronous. It happens in silence, in concentration, in blocks that last for 123 minutes or more.

The Cost to Craftsmanship

Consider Sarah S.-J., a court sketch artist. Her work requires precision under extreme pressure… Imagine Sarah, 133 lines into a critical profile of a key witness, finally hitting that perfect angle where the light catches the tension in the defense attorney’s hand.

The quick question is the enemy of craftsmanship. Think about objects that require meticulous, uninterrupted effort… They are the antithesis of hurried communication.

Reverence Over Responsiveness

If you have ever held a piece of fine porcelain, maybe a delicately hand-painted figurine from the Limoges Box Boutique, you understand this principle intuitively. You cannot interrupt the artisan for a ‘quick clarification’ on the placement of the 33rd shadow line without ruining the entire piece.

We need to stop pretending that immediate accessibility equals professional effectiveness. It signals panic, poor planning, or a refusal to spend 13 minutes gathering the necessary context oneself.

Shifting to Asynchronous Default

There is a critical shift required in how we communicate, moving from the Default of Interruption to the Default of Asynchronicity. If you feel the urge to send a ‘Quick Q,’ force yourself to pause and ask three simple things:

If the answer to that last point is yes, then maybe-maybe-you have earned the right to ask. But you still don’t use ‘Quick Q’ in the subject line. That phrase is fundamentally disrespectful of someone else’s cognitive sovereignty.

The Debt of Context Switching

My mistake reminded me that even those of us who preach focus often fail when stress hits. But acknowledging the failure is the first step toward reclaiming that valuable, uninterrupted space. We must actively fight the cultural addiction to immediacy.

Speed vs. Velocity

Give people the space to be slow, deliberate, and detailed. Give them 133 minutes of silence. If you demand immediate response, don’t complain when the result looks rushed, cheap, and disposable. That is the unavoidable debt of convenience.