“The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting story dealing with a study about email user behavior, explaining how and why email can be a terrible distraction:

“It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.”

Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically:

“So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there’s something wonderful — an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.” There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted.”