^ Except this doesn’t work in Entourage!!

For real, this is what I do… I keep a countdown timer on my desktop. For 48 minutes I ignore all non-urgent IM, irc, and email communication and I only communicate with others if its relevant for the task at hand. After the timer finishes, I reset it to 12 minutes, and allow myself to check email, irc, hit the bathroom, read a random article from my rss feed, etc. etc.

I only ever void this schedule if the work I’m doing is super critical or if I’m really in the zone and it doesn’t seem like a need to take a short mental breather. By the time 48 minutes is up, I normally do.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that I filter my email to try and capture things that really do need my attention. Anything that doesn’t have my name, or one of the DL’s I’m responsible for directly on the TO: line, my email client gives it a low priority and I only check low priority emails at the beginning of the next day (so I can assign things to me in my GTD list for that day). This keeps the signal/noise ratio of the email I check constantly to an acceptable – and also has the side effect of making you resist the urge to peanut gallery on threads you were merely CC’ed on.