> being in the same office can minimize the frequency/setup/teardown of formal meetings.
Aka "You won't get shit done because person B saves five seconds by asking you and costs you 5 minutes by them asking while you try to remember what you where doing".
I wish it was only 5 minutes. It can easily take an hour to get back into "the zone" (for lack of a better term) if you're running at peak performance when they interrupt
Not all same-place cultures encourage such interruptions. At their best, same-place cultures still have taboos and barriers against distruptive cross-talk. (And the sorts of IM/chat/conferencing tools most celebrated by distributed teams can deliver just as many derailing interruptions, if team habits encourage that.)
Co-present team members can often sense when a question is most welcome – fitting them into the day's normal interstices – or learn enough via ambient observation that many questions aren't even necessary.
Yeah, if it happens once. Context-switching is cumulative. 5 minutes for the first disruption, 10 minutes for the second, 30 for the next, and you just quit working after the fourth.
Aka "You won't get shit done because person B saves five seconds by asking you and costs you 5 minutes by them asking while you try to remember what you where doing".
Been there, done that, never again.