This happens alot at work. I'm the webmaster, sysadmin, and I man the help desk. I also work on big projects for our clients. Often these take weeks or months to complete. In order for these projects to go smoothly, I have to maintain a reasonable pace. I'm under pressure to complete billable projects on-time and underbudget.

Often these long-term projects require a lot of focus and creativity. I'm very effective when I can shut the outside world and get into a "zone".

The problem is that I'm always being pulled away from a long-term billable project to put out a fire. The help desk phone rings, I have to do that part of my job. A server decides to act like a 2-year old. I have to fix it. Everyday something happens and I have to step out of my "zone" and address a crisis. Then I have trouble resuming what I was doing with the long-term project. Often I forget where I was or what idea I was developing. Then some other crisis occurs and I have to deal with that. This happens over and over.

Sometimes I end up putting the long-term project on the shelf in fear that if I resume, my focus will be broken and I won't be able to get back in the zone.

Who experiences this and how do you deal with it?

And then your not sure if you've really done the kind of job you know you really can do on that long term job of the interuptions. I know exactly what you are describing.

I juggle several positions within our organization. I used to have more and I find it very difficult to say "no" to people. Not only am I the meeting planner for our association, which requires lots of detailed organization (great with someone who is ADHD!), I am also our Manager of Databases, which puts me part time in the IT department so I get lots of interuptions throughout the day.

We have recently added in hardware/software which allows us to work from home so I do that at night and find I can sometimes use that time for some projects, but I can't take all the files in my office home with me, so..

The slow people (that's the way rest of the office feels to me) don't understand how their interuptions affect my day. Their simple "It won't take you a minute to fix this" can take me forever to recapture the moment I was in. I may not remember the thought stream I had, or worse, what I was doing when they interupted me to drag me down the hall to tell them if Outlook isn't open you can't sync your palm.

One thing I do is close my door during critical times and have Office hours. Tech support hours for you could be from 10-12 in the morning and 2-3 in the afternoon. All other times are for you to do critical work unless it's an emergency (computer locks up on someone, they truly can't work, etc.).

It's hard when you have a job that sets you up when you have an attentional problem.

Often what I did was take my work home. But my best PC is at the office because my employer can't afford to provide me with a high-powered workstation. Plus in my area of NH, there's no broadband. So I can't do that.

I'm seeing that I'm going to have to have a convo w/ my boss (very supportive and accommodating) requesting that I set aside 4 hours of "quiet time" every day for me to work on this stuff.