Slowly, trying to enforce discipline and focus attention

When I'm sitting at my desk at work, I've got at least six different channels of input to deal with. They are:

- My Windows laptop on the left of my desk, which handles my work e-mail.
- My Mac laptop on the right of my desk, which handles my personal e-mail.
- My cell phone in my left pocket, which handles my personal phone calls and text messages.
- My office phone in the middle of my desk, which handles my work phone calls.
- My BlackBerry on my right hip, which handles work-related e-mail and text messages.
- People walking over to me to talk.

Barely 30 seconds go by without something coming through on one of those channels. Knowing how to prioritize and triage this input- and how to block it out entirely to actually be able to focus on work- is an art and a skill that has so far evaded me.

I am working on it.

Here's an interesting set of e-mail productivity tips, from an interesting site.