In 1997 or thereabouts, it became clear to me that I would always have email waiting to be read. Therefore: 1. I set up an independent account that only gets

In 1997 or thereabouts, it became clear to me that I would always have email waiting to be read. Therefore: 1. I set up an independent account that only gets wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night alerts. 2. I started automatically filtering all email into different folders. 3. I stopped all email alert indicators except for the wake-me-up account. Ever since then, I check email when I get to a natural break in other activities. This happens seven or eight times a day, usually, so I'm never particularly far behind.