Washington DC is a very busy place. Seems like everyone is very driven and always has something going on which is going to help them move up one ring on the social or economic ladder.
It’s why everyone in DC carries a Blackberry or an iPhone. Everyone plays this game of how much crap can I pack into one day. You go up to someone and be like “let’s go grab a beer and chat.” They’ll say “how’s 2 weeks from Tuesday?”
This has caused me to think… I think if you want to build community… a big and healthy community… you can’t completely run your life by what the calendar on your Blackberry says. Life doesn’t tune itself to what’s convenient for your schedule.
If you want to have community, you need to leave yourself flexible and open enough that when life throws yourself a curveball you can go more then just surface level deep. You need to be able to sit down and get to the heart of the issue.
At Clearspring, our users don’t time their technical questions or product questions around when my calendar is open. I need to be available so that if a developer of VP of Biz Dev calls me in a panic I can help assure them that I’m here to help and that together we’ll be able to solve the problem.
Hmm… More on this topic later.
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
It’s the classic problem of scheduled events and interrupts – and balancing the priorities of both. Schedules are safer, interrupts more responsive (but more stressful to base your life around).