Steve Kovach, a writer for Business Insider, talks about his recent week away from email. He disabled Twitter and email notifications on his phone for a week, then went back to his inbox. What was there: As he explains:

• 1,511 unread emails.
• 44 of those 1,511 emails were worth reading.
• Of those 44 emails, only five required a response….

We all like to complain about email, but my week-long experiment helped me realize how truly broken it is. Email started as an easy and effective way to communicate. Now it’s just a constant source of frustration.

Personally I removed almost all notifications from my phone a while ago, and tweaked my phone and text tones so I could reserve my attention for people who have the right to interrupt me, and no one else. It’s really worked well for me.