New research suggests that email, to hardly anyone's surprise, is a huge time waster. A UK scientist studying how we use email found that stopping to check your email imposes a big time loss on us as we switch back and forth mentally between tasks. For those who have their email set to check automatically on frequent intervals, the overhead of task switching can eat up an entire workday out of a five day work week.
The solution is pretty simple. Turn off automatic checking and check your email only a few times a day. Fewer interruptions means more time spent on work.