My technique for this is: 1) Separation of work and personal e-mail into two accounts (which is good for a whole number of reasons). 2) Work e-mail is configu

My technique for this is: 1) Separation of work and personal e-mail into two accounts (which is good for a whole number of reasons). 2) Work e-mail is configured on my phone but disabled. It means that if I have to access it it's relatively painless but there's no notifications and not even any ability to manually check without re-enabling it (which is a mental barrier which I know I shouldn't be crossing - like the HN noprocrast thing - you can override it easily but you know you shouldn't so you don't). 3) Personal e-mail isn't set to notify in any way except through the badge (I find personal e-mail is rarely urgent enough for me to feel any strong compulsion). I find that the barriers you have to put up are actually very small, just enough to stop the habitual, quick checking. As soon as it takes more than a second or two to do, you stop doing it pretty quickly. Now if only I could find similarly successful mechanisms for Twitter, RSS and the news.