Our calendars are often painful because they display order (meetings) too well, but don’t display disorder (surprises and interruptions) at all.
Into every developer’s day (and managers in particular) arrives surprises, interruptions, questions, and side-quests. A bit of chaotic disorder.
Personally, in signing up for the job of engineering manager, I feel like I also signed up for the job of handling surprises and side-quests. I take them on not to protect my teams’ focus or time, but because surprises and questions are some of the best kind of information I can receive. They represent the friction points between my mental model of the organization or system and the details of the real world.
I would probably trade more interruptions and side quests for fewer recurring meetings!