Trying Something Drastic

I've changed my Outlook notifications at work so that it doesn't tell me every time I have a new email. Before, that stupid envelope would pop up and I couldn't resist going to see what it was. Now I don't know I have new email unless I check. And I only think to check when I'm actually between tasks. Which means I don't constantly interrupt myself to go look, forget was I was doing, move on to something else, and have lots of unfinished things at the end of the day.

There are productivity gurus who say you should only check your email twice a day, but that sounds like heresy in the culture I work in. We'll see how long before somebody freaks out that I didn't respond to a message within five minutes.