Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic – New York Times is making me think twice about having my email window open on my desktop most of the time:

In a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites.