You have 17 new emails.

I sit here with my computer running a music player program, an instant messaging program, an email program, a web browser with four open tabs, and five instances of a word processing program (not including the one I’m using to write this out in). One of those web browser tabs contains this story from the Times, about the rise of ubiquitous information for office workers. It discusses the pros and cons of multitasking, and the science of the ideal interruption, and makes the assertion that “[i]n the modern office we are all fighter pilots.” What this means is that we’re constantly buffetted by an endless barrage of information–text, graphics, images, audible alerts, phone calls, instant messages–forcing us to process it in a way that was previously the domain of specialized workers like pilots, telegraph operators, or wall street brokers.

Anyway, if you found yourself interested in the (10+2)*5 procrastination prevention formula, you might want to check out this article as well. It’s a good read.