The interruption issue has plagued me for the last 10 years. Firstly working at home with flatmates or wife, then with children and now at an office next to the marketing team.
Instead of trying to fight the interruptions themselves, I decided to try and become better/faster at context switching by training myself to compartmentalize the jobs on hand (programming/helping kids/answering questions).
It took a while to figure it out and i'm still getting better at it, but so far it works pretty well and I can jump between contexts much better than i could before. When I get interrupted, I'll take a snapshot of where i am, store it away and 'switch' to the new issue.
Instead of trying to fight the interruptions themselves, I decided to try and become better/faster at context switching by training myself to compartmentalize the jobs on hand (programming/helping kids/answering questions).
It took a while to figure it out and i'm still getting better at it, but so far it works pretty well and I can jump between contexts much better than i could before. When I get interrupted, I'll take a snapshot of where i am, store it away and 'switch' to the new issue.