Smack! That's the sound of me slapping my head ;-) Some things are so obvious in hindsight and yet you don't come up with them, eventhough they've been sitting right in front of your nose for years...

Case in hand: today I've deactivated automatic checking for both my mailclient as well as my feedreader - and I can't tell you what a great difference it has made...

Having read Ole Eichhorn's excellent advice on the subject (aptly) entitled "The Tyranny of Email" I've already aquired the habit of dutyfully quitting Mail.app and NetNewsWire every time I afforded myself the luxury of going 'into the zone' (sometimes I even switch off my phone...)

But a) even during my 'normal' work I found the sporadic appearance of these little unread-counters quite distracting and b) often, even when 'in the zone' I would need to refer to an email or a newspost - I fire up Mail.app or NNW (that alone is prone to interrupt my workflow, especially NNWs startup time isn't really short) and then see all the new mails/posts that have arrived - wham! another distraction. Plus, often I forget to quit the app again and bingo! Five minutes later there's another little white-on-red number competing for my attention...

Anyway, that's all history now.