People feel free to interrupt others with that innocent-sounding question, “Got a minute?” And the interrupted people think they have to be polite and say, “Sure, how can I help?” – even when they are desperately busy on a deadline. They let the Time Bandit steal their time because they have been acculturated to believe they must.
But the Interruption Culture persists for a very good reason: We like it. We perpetuate it. We love our smart phones, our routers, our search engines, our unfettered access and exposure to everybody and everything. We demand to be immediately informed, via alerts on our stash of devices, what’s happening with the weather, traffic, stock market, politics, crime, sports, celebrities, our favorite Twitter feeds and our Facebook friends. Who can wait for the evening news or the morning paper when a story might be going viral?