There’s one card from Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies that stands out when thinking of this: “Use filters”.

I’m starting to find that concentrating my interrupt load on a device that’s physically small enough to only be able to show one interrupt at a time has done a lot for my ability to work in a state of flow and not in a state of thrash more of the time. The other thing that’s helping is not having additions to the TODO list show up in an infinte unsorted queue but go in each deliberately and with some negotation before being added.

Some thinking from a few years ago is here:

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2004/04/managing_interr.html

My current device that interrupts me is a Blackberry, so i get some fraction of my email buzzing me as it comes in, but not random IM and IRC windows unless I am deliberately in that mode.