Comment by lttlrck
This is adjacent to the post but most (software) engineers I have interacted with are amazing plate spinners and an interruption is just another (ephemeral) plate to spin and it's not even close to 20 minutes recovery time.
Unless it's an emergency (boohoo it'll take whatever it takes) or it tickles my fancy more than what I'm doing - which is a me problem.
When some of those plates are unnecessary, it causes problems. I may be responsible for 3 plates worth of work, and be capable of 6 on a really good day. On a bad day though, 3 may be all I can handle and an interruption=dropped plate.