Do you remember the childhood game "Hot Potato", where somebody will have what is supposed to be a "hot potato" and when it gets passed to you, you end up bouncing it from hand to hand until you can pass it off to somebody else. Well, welcome to "Hot Potato 2.0". Only now it's called e-mail, voice mail, text and instant messaging.
The amount of emails I receive at work are insane, but at least I have the freedom to check and respond as I wish. But my instant message is either off or indicates a status of busy, and I typically do not to answer my phone unless I am actually available to have a hot potato dropped in my hands. If I pick up the phone and somebody is on the other line, regardless of how busy I indicate that I may be or how many hot potatoes I have in my hand at that time, they still spew out their request or need, as want to give me theirs, too. Well I don't want it. I don't have room for it. So instead of having it forced on me by their having called or caught me on chat long enough to have placed it in my hand, I make them leave it for me to come get when I can.
I'm at the end of a very difficult project. In the fast paced, high demand world that I am living in these days, the only way to achieve anything is to not answer the phone when I'm already busy, not respond to incoming SMS messages that'll pull me off task, not be available on AOL chat that distracts my current focus, and instead to just let things get tossed over the fence where I can sort them out without somebody tapping their foot and looking at their watch as I do so.
If the phone isn't answered, it's me.