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The most common typical sign to signal you are not up for talking are head phones. You don't even need to listen to something, but they obviously make it clear you cannot overhear conversations - and do not want to. So people should only really bother you if they think they have something important to discuss.

Some teams also use flags, USB powered miniature traffic lights etc. But if you are the only one using them it might come off as a bit odd.

However, if your team is somewhat receptive, it should also suffice to keep looking at the monitor and focus on work. Maybe answer with a short "sorry not now". After a while they should be able to "read" when you're up for some fun talk and when not.

Also desk location can help a lot. If it is in a corner, you can remove yourself somewhat from their perception and thus be more "off radar" and inject yourself into conversations when you want than if your desk is in the middle of everything.

Different workplaces have established different ways to signal whether or not one is open for conversations right now.

• 
  Door language. Open door: Come in and ask me how my kids are. Leaning door: Come in when it's about work. Closed door: Leave me alone unless there is an end-of-the-world problem. This obviously only works at workplaces where people have segregated offices.


• 
  Headphones, as mentioned by Frank Hopkins.


• 
  "Do not disturb" lights. Simple gadgets which can glow in different colors to indicate whether or not people should approach you right now.

Establishing such a non-verbal language can greatly increase the productivity of professions like software developers whose work switches between phases which are highly communicative and phases which require high concentration and alone-time. So everyone should be open to trying something like this just in the name of productivity.

Which solution in particular is appropriate for your particular workspace depends mostly on its interior architecture.

I don't want to mansplain how women should behave in the workplace and I certainly do not have any business in telling women how to deal with their periods, but from my limited male perspective I don't think that it would be a good idea to tell people explicitly that your mood highly depends on your menstrual cycle. It would just reinforce the differences between men and women and give colleagues an excuse to dismiss any critique from you (and other female colleagues) with sexist statements like "you don't need to take her seriously, I bet she has her period again".

How can I indicate to my coworkers that it is not OK to talk to me while I am working?

and

I am a software developer and I find it very hard to context switch frequently

If this is a "general" scenario and you feel the interruption(s) is(are) affecting your work in a negative way, be straight (but polite) about it. Say

"Hey, I'm in middle of something, can I get back to you once I'm done? Thank you!!"

However, as you also mentioned that this is the case with a specific time in the month, we have multiple options:

• Short: 0-60 Minutes If you say you need the "me" time (to get rid of the "low" state) somewhere between 5-10 minutes to an hour - the simple way is to take a break. Be away from your desk, roam around and you can even try some yoga (if a provision is there in the workplace) to relieve you of the stress.




• Moderate: 1-2 hours If you think this takes an hour or two - you can simply set your communicator to DND, put your headphones on (whether they are playing something or not is irrelevant) and maybe to focus on something that helps you cool of or concentrate, and if anyone approaches you for a F2F chat, just be polite again and say "can I get back you in an hour's time? There's something I need to get done, sorry about this" and then get back when you are back to normal. Avoid having conversation when you know you're in bad mood.




• Extensive: More than 2 hours Well, the best way to go is to to avail work from home if possible. Minimal interaction. If this happens in middle of a day, check if you can find a meeting room/ audio-video privacy room that you can occupy, away from the usual desk location. Alternatively, see if you can leave early and continue / complete the work from home.

That said:

I feel like this might be cause for being ridiculed or people might irritate me even more just to test my patience.

Well, that does not sound like a very supportive workplace. Why do you feel that way? Has is happened before to you / someone else? Or it is a pure guesswork? Don't assume things, specially negative things, about people.

Will putting up a sign on my desk that reads "Please do not disturb for next 1 hour" work [1]?

That would be a very bad text. If I walk up to your desk, and see that note, how would I know whether that hour has passed or not? Or, if I can assume you remove the sign as soon as the hour is up, how much longer do I have to wait?

[1] I am a software developer and I find it very hard to context switch frequently

Well, that is something you have to work on. While context switches are annoying, that is life if you are working for a company with more than one employee. Yes, it sucks for you, but it sucks more for the company as a whole if others can't progress because you just can't deal with context switches. Most people don't like context switches, whether they are software developers or not. But they accept context switches are needed for things to happen.

Not talking to anyone is only acceptable if you are working on something very urgent. If your website is down, and no sales are possible. The server room is on fire. The million dollar customer wants a feature now. Etc. And even then, you still need to talk to other fighting the same fire.

Otherwise, you should at least talk to them, and quickly assess how urgent their request is, and how much time it's going to take. Then deal with that issue, or ask them whether it's ok you come back to it later (and then really come back to them in a timely matter).

Having said that, you can raise the barrier to contact you. Setting the "busy" flag on your Jabber/Slack/whatever. Find a desk elsewhere. Headphones may work in some environments (although I've never worked in such). I doubt a sign will work though, as most people won't pay attention what's on someones desk (many desks are just piled with stuff). And do talk with your manager -- whatever you're going to use, it's only going to work if other people know what the look for.

This doesn't have to be gender related -- just think of Makers vs Managers -- Makers need to be uninterrupted and in The Flow, while Managers are ready for interruptions and pivots. Every employee may have parts of each role in their job.

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

simulating the manager's schedule within the maker's: office hours. Several times a week I set aside a chunk of time to meet founders we've funded. These chunks of time are at the end of my working day, and I wrote a signup program that ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hours are clustered at the end. Because they come at the end of my day these meetings are never an interruption.

So instead of saying do NOT disturb, say instead that you WILL be available for interruption/discussion at xx:00.

If it helps, perhaps the sign can say "On Deadline & in the Zone. No interruptions until 3PM, please."

I'm trying to advise my Team Lead that she needs to put her skype mode into "busy" more often, so she can do herwork, and we can save up questions until later. The "Maker/Manager" terminology helped her. It's something a lot of developers are comfortable with, and again, nothing to do with gender.

You can present it as "I found out why distractions bug me... I realized how much they disrupt my flow, because I get into XYZ mindset, so it would help if y'all check to see if my Programming Now Sign is up. Right after lunch is a great time to ask questions, or if you email them, I'll answer them when I need a break."

TL;DR - it's hopefully not your problem specifically. Just ask your fellow developers calmly, casually, how "we" deal with this in this team.

This is not a problem specific to you, or specific to women, or anything like that. (Although I appreciate from your background comments it can seem to be.) Software developers just don't need to be disturbed.

So make it impartial, something you just ask your new team? Ask the team, in a meeting or in email or whatever seems appropriate, "Can I just check, how do we show in this team when we're in the flow and don't want to be disturbed?"

Don't make it a special request, just something you'd need to know as standard. No software developer likes to be disturbed when they are in the flow, it is very counter productive. (You can Google plenty of results to back this up. It's a profession for people expected to think in concentrated bursts for a living, right?) So make it just a question with implied background "We all have this problem; I'm new so I just need to check the appropriate signal this team uses to avoid it."

And hopefully in a team of developers, several people will say "Oh, I wear headphones" or whatever.

Now, if everyone says "huh?" you will have to think of other steps, but it really shouldn't come to that.

You don't say what people disturbingly discuss with you? This seems an important point.

If people ask you technical questions which are relevant to them, but it interrupts you, you can try immediately "Let me get back to you in 10 minutes" and if it keeps happening, at a team discussion ask "I've noticed we interrupt each other all the time, which makes us less productive, how can we organise this more?" (Not well phrased perhaps.) You could suggest "Can we ask non-critical questions via instant messenger" or whatever seems useful.

If people get into asking you trivial questions so you wish you could say "Let me Google that for you" (obviously don't say that), difficult. Maybe they are ignorant, and then you can help them learn how to solve it for themselves. If they are lazy, delay answering ("give me an hour") and hopefully they learn for themselves. But it's not an easy one. Some people can be helped to stop doing it (it is an easy thing to start doing) and some can't, then you have to decide "OK I will not help them."

If they are just gossiping, chatting or whatever, does it disturb because they ask you? Be unresponsive and they will stop eventually. (I assume you'd want that. If you want them to chat like that but only at certain times, I guess you will have to be pro-active at the right times to gossip with them to preserve those relationships. When they and you are idle, obviously.)

If they are in your vicinity, not talking to you, just making noise, see other questions on this site about dealing with noisy co-workers. Although good luck with it :(

One thing you didn't say is "I asked my boss about it and...". Maybe you had good reason for it, fair enough. But just to be complete, if you didn't consider it, think about it. A good boss should be helping you fit in and removing problems - it's in their interest.