It’s totally normal that as teams evolve, engineers that in the past were able to work without distractions, they now have more responsibilities or collaborate more and get flooded by incoming requests that fragment their time. We’ve seen this multiple times and there are simple solutions:

1. Handle requests async — All your requests should come async, and you should handle them async.
2. Batch requests - Have a long period of deep work, and batch all incoming requests.
3. Change interface for requests - Don’t handle them on slack channels or DMs. Use a Linear team. If people continue to use Slack you can remind them to use the new interface.
4. Triage - Set up the Triage section on Linear, so that incoming requests don’t get to your “TODO” list right away. You’re in control of your TODO list, not others. Requests go to Triage, and you decide what is important and what now.
5. Overflow and say NO - You will have limited time to work on incoming requests and if there’s too many there will be a tradeoff between solving one-off issues or solving the underlying system that in the near future will stop these one-off issues. If there’s more incoming requests that you can handle you will have to prioritise and say no to some.
6. Time Caps (%) - When the situation is severe and you’re getting a lot of incoming requests, it’s very important to set a time cap in advance. For example “I will spend max 20% of my time on requests”. That’s your max, and whatever doesn’t fit is discarded.
7. Calendar blocking - Block long periods of time in your calendar where you will not attend any incoming requests.