Most people believe they are able to deal with interruptions. Very few people are actually able to do so in an even remotely efficient manner.

Still teams of gifted individuals tend to achieve more than sum of gifted individuals working alone, distractions notwithstanding.

Anyway I'm reserved about the very thesis that office life is particularly full of distractions. At home office you might have spouse and kids who are even less understanding of your "zone" than your coworkers. If you are single it might be neighbors driving their renovation project with hammer drills at work hours. You probably have a TV, game console, your guitar, your pet, and basically have to rely on self-discipline with that.

Remember there is a distinction between remote working and working from home.

I can usually deal with interruptions in a gracious and friendly manner. I'm a nice guy, usually laid back, and capable of rapid context switching.

I have discovered, however, that since I do not work for an emergency room, my context-switching-skills are rather undervalued by the free market. The value I generate for clients and employers is very much correlated to my ability to train clients & colleagues to let me focus on solving one problem completely before moving on to the next problem.

I find when you describe the effect of interruptions in terms employers understand — "working this way costs you money, both directly, because I charge a not-insignificant amount per hour, and indirectly, because there are opportunity costs to my working on emergencies instead of farther-reaching goals" — they will become your allies in fighting off interruptions. If you just complain that interruptions are distracting and irritating, well, you're just gonna get a prima-donna label for yourself.

I love working as a team. My creatives can make something look more visually appealing in a few hours that I could in a few months. I can develop the functionality in a few days when they wouldn't know where to start. We all have our strengths. But creative work is inherently a selfish, individual act requiring concentration, and interruptions, in most instances, don't help the team meet their goals.

Absolutely agree - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.

I'm a software engineer married to brain surgeon. She will be the first to tell you that the actual procedures, while technical, are essentially arts and crafts; they require care, but not extreme mental focus.

However, when she's reviewing patient charts and imaging to prepare for a procedure, that requires absolute focus, and she will isolate herself completely for hours and not talk to anyone no matter what. So, there is a time for collaboration, but there is also a time for focusing on one task to the exclusion of everything else.

So when brain surgeons are operating, do their bosses pop in and ask them inane questions they could get answers to via email?

Developers don't need to continuously collaborate. Even brain surgeons spend a lot of time reading up on papers and research and interruptions do not help them.

Absolutely - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.