If I meet someone outside my circle in the office, I have to put on all the technical filters or else the conversation isn’t going to last very long. Can’t really innovate, but there is a value in those people knowing that I exist.

I’m actually in a pretty ideal scenario right now. I work in the office a few days of the week, and yeah, there’s usually office socializing that cuts into my productivity, but all the people that need to ask me for stuff are mostly remote so I still get the benefit of asynchronous communication instead of getting pulled out of ‘the zone’ all day long.