Rubbing my eyes doesn’t help. If anything, the friction is just grinding the residual molecules of that ‘Invigorating Mint’ shampoo deeper into my corneas, creating a stinging sensation that feels remarkably like a thousand tiny needles dancing on my pupils. It’s my own fault, really. I tried to rush the shower to get back to this specific line of thought, and now I’m squinting at the screen through a watery haze, my vision oscillating between blurry and slightly less blurry. The physical pain is a perfect mirror for the mental friction I’m currently feeling as I watch that little typing bubble dance in the corner of my chat app. I know what’s coming. We all know what’s coming. It’s the three most terrifying words in the modern workplace: ‘Got a sec?’

We call it a ‘quick’ question because we want to minimize the perceived cost of our intrusion. It’s a linguistic lubricant designed to slide past the recipient’s defenses. But there is no such thing as a quick question in a world built on deep work. When I’m 47 minutes deep into a logical architecture, trying to map out how a database handles concurrent writes without corrupting the state, your ‘quick question’ about where the logo assets are stored is a thermal detonator in my mental engine room. It doesn’t take 7 seconds to answer; it takes 27 minutes to rebuild the scaffolding of my thoughts that you just knocked over. That’s the tax. It’s a steep, non-negotiable fee that we all pay to the gods of ‘collaboration,’ and I’m starting to think the interest rates are predatory.

Precision vs. Interruption

I was talking to Taylor A.J. about this the other day. Taylor is an elevator inspector, a job that requires a terrifying amount of precision and an even more terrifying amount of patience. We were standing near a service lift in an old 37-story building downtown. Taylor was measuring the tension on the governor overspeed switch-a component that prevents the elevator from turning into a free-falling metal coffin-when a building manager poked his head around the corner. ‘Hey Taylor, quick question: Do you think we can fit the new vending machine in the lobby service alcove?’

Taylor didn’t look up. He didn’t even blink, despite the grease on his forehead and the 17 different measurements he was holding in his head. He just kept his calipers steady. Later, over a lukewarm coffee that cost $7, he told me that a ‘quick question’ in his line of work can literally be a death sentence. ‘If I lose my place in the safety check,’ Taylor said, ‘I have to start the entire 47-point sequence from the beginning. There is no ‘quick’ when you’re dealing with 2,700 pounds of counterweight.’ We like to think that our digital desk jobs are different, that we can pivot on a dime, but our brains aren’t built for that kind of context switching. We are not multi-core processors; we are single-threaded storytellers trying to keep a complex narrative alive in our working memory.

When someone asks a quick question, they aren’t actually looking for an answer. Or rather, the answer is secondary. What they are actually doing is asserting that their immediate need for information is more valuable than your sustained focus. It’s a subtle, often unconscious power play. By demanding a synchronous response to an asynchronous problem, the asker is declaring themselves the protagonist of the office narrative, while you are relegated to the role of a helpful NPC (non-player character) who exists only to provide quest items. It’s an assertion of priority that ignores the 137 other things you might be doing.

The Interruption Ransom

I’ve made this mistake myself, of course. I remember messaging a developer at 2:07 PM on a Tuesday, asking for a ‘quick’ clarification on a bug report. I thought I was being efficient. I thought I was ‘moving the needle.’ In reality, I was snapping a thread that he had been weaving for three hours. I watched his status change from ‘Active’ to ‘Away’ shortly after. He didn’t answer for 47 minutes, and when he did, his tone was clipped, professional, and clearly exhausted. I hadn’t just asked a question; I had stolen his flow state and held it for ransom.

This is why the culture of ‘instant’ is so destructive. We’ve replaced meaningful progress with the dopamine hit of a cleared notification. We would rather have 77 shallow interactions than 7 hours of deep progress. We’ve become terrified of silence, of the gap between a question being asked and an answer being received. But that gap is where the real work happens. It’s where the counterweights are balanced and the safety checks are finalized. If we lose the ability to respect that gap, we lose the ability to build anything of lasting value.

The Asynchronous Dream

There’s a certain irony in writing this while my eyes still sting from the shampoo. I’m trying to be precise while my sensory input is screaming at me to stop. It’s a lot like trying to work in a modern open-office plan or a high-volume Slack environment. You’re constantly squinting through the ‘noise’ of other people’s priorities, trying to find the signal of your own work. It’s exhausting. It’s a 7-day-a-week struggle to maintain a perimeter around your own mind.

What’s the alternative? It starts with acknowledging that most questions are not emergencies. If you can wait 27 minutes for an answer, you can probably wait 127 minutes. We need to move toward a culture of asynchronous communication where ‘deep work’ is the default state, not a luxury you have to fight for. We need processes that are so intuitive and seamless that the need for the ‘quick question’ disappears entirely. Think about the way a truly optimized system works-like a high-end retail experience where you order something and it’s just there, waiting, without you needing to hunt down a clerk to ask where the pickup counter is.

When I look at the efficiency of a platform like Bomba.md, I see the antithesis of the ‘quick question’ culture. It’s a journey designed to be frictionless, where the information you need is exactly where you expect it to be, allowing you to get in, get what you need, and get back to your life without being derailed by a lack of clarity. That’s the dream: a world where we don’t have to interrupt each other to be productive.

But instead, we have the ‘ping.’ We have the ‘Hey, got a sec?’ We have the 7 different ways to be notified that someone else is bored and wants you to solve their problem for them. I’ve started implementing a ‘7-minute rule.’ If I feel the urge to ask someone a quick question, I have to wait at least 7 minutes and try to find the answer myself first. You’d be surprised how often the answer is sitting right in front of you, buried in the 47th line of a document you were too lazy to read thoroughly. Or better yet, the problem solves itself as you’re forced to think through the logic of it. The ‘quick question’ is often just a shortcut for our own cognitive laziness.

The Value of Being Unavailable

Taylor A.J. told me that when he’s in the shaft, he turns his phone off entirely. It’s the only way to ensure the safety of the 2,007 people who will use that elevator the next day. He doesn’t care about vending machines or lobby layouts when he’s looking at a frayed cable. There’s a lesson there for the rest of us. The world won’t end if we don’t answer the Slack message immediately. The company won’t fold if we take 3 hours to reply to an email. In fact, the company might actually perform better if we were allowed to finish a single thought without it being shattered by a ‘quick’ inquiry about the lunch order.

My eyes are finally starting to stop stinging. The blurriness is receding, and the screen is coming back into focus. It’s a relief. It’s the same relief I feel when I finish a long block of uninterrupted work-that sense of clarity and accomplishment that can only come from a deep dive into a difficult problem. You can’t get that feeling in 7-minute increments. You can’t get it when you’re constantly being pulled to the surface by the anchor of someone else’s curiosity.

Maybe if we all did that, we’d find that the questions weren’t that urgent after all. Maybe we’d find that the most valuable thing we can give each other isn’t an immediate answer, but the space to think. I’m going to go wash my face again, just to be sure. The mint is lingering, a sharp reminder that rushing usually leads to more pain than it saves. 77% of our daily stress is self-imposed by these tiny, ‘quick’ redirections. It’s time to stop paying the tax.