Number of words: 90

It takes about four minutes to recover from an electronic interruption and regain your train of thought. So if you have 30 e-mails a day and look up 30 times, that’s 120 minutes of recovery time. Try setting up your computer system to receive mail every 90 minutes. That way you don’t get barraged by those tempting blips. If you’re expecting something utterly urgent, you can always override the system and check it yourself.

Excerpted from pages 47 of Enough: breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish