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Comment by _xhok | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I can completely see that happening.

His anger could have been more healthily displaced, but being interrupted while you're thinking is actually the most frustrating thing ever. From my own experience the biggest problem is that sometimes when you're thinking you don't even realize it, and it's not till you're interrupted that you do. And once you're self-aware, the flow of thoughts required with the hardest kinds of thinking comes to a stop.

And if this guy is thinking about the kind of insanely hard stuff he thought about, man, I can't imagine how much that would've sucked.

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"But I just had a quick question! It will only take two seconds of your time!"

To me, the real problem is that a lot of people don't understand that the duration of the interrupting event itself is often the lesser of the distractions. The fifteen minutes I have to spend getting my head back on-track afterward is the real pain-in-the-ass, and what are the chances that those fifteen minutes go uninterrupted?

That's why you go into another room and lock the door.

That doesn't solve every problem, but it helps.

Promises, promises. In my experience, women produce very few actual two-second interruptions.

EDIT: Hey downvoters -- I did say "in my experience". I'm not making a statement about all women.

True for men too. If someone has a "quick question" where I work, I might as well block off the next hour.

> True for men too.

Yes, absolutely, and notwithstanding the popular myth that men are more taciturn than women.

Are you seriously defending launching into a violent rage against your wife for being interrupted? Its a bit more than "his anger could have been more healthily displaced."

I think his intent was more to express empathy than to defend the behavior. You don't have to claim something is justifiable to recognize circumstances under which it might happen.

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