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I'm far from perfect at this, but my general idea is that you should never start something other than code reviews if you have review requests pending. Interrupting something to review is awful, but as soon as you are interrupted you should prioritize unblocking people.

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That's a hard perspective for many developers to adopt because people understandably prioritize their own tasks and deadlines. I think it needs manager support and even encouragement because it's a global optimization for your team's productivity. Reviewing and merging pending PRs will deliver value to your product sooner than procrastinating on pending PRs so you can write new code that will then need to wait for some other developer to review it. It can be a vicious cycle.

Additionally, at least in small-medium sized teams, I've seen teams become over reliant on the small number of people who prioritize and respond quickly to code review requests. A benefit of not prioritizing code review as an individual is that it can naturally spread the review responsibility, and understanding of the code, more broadly.

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