The cost of being reachable

Being reachable is the easiest virtue to perform. It requires no skill, produces immediate gratitude, and can be sustained for years before anyone notices the work that quietly stopped getting done.

The cost is not the replies. It is the standing instruction your mind takes from them: nothing here is safe from interruption, so do not start anything that requires being uninterrupted. Under that instruction you drift toward shallow tasks, not from laziness but from prudence.

Reachability also redistributes planning. When I can be asked at any moment, other people no longer need to batch, prepare, or decide. My openness becomes their scheduling system, and it is a poor one for both of us.

The alternative is not being unreachable. It is being predictable. Answer twice a day, at times people can learn. Say when you will reply, and then reply. Predictability gives people everything speed gave them except the illusion that you are always standing by.

Expect a strange grief in the first week. Fast replies were a form of proof that you mattered to the day's traffic. What replaces it is slower and better: work that took more than one sitting, finished.