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The challenge I've had when coping with this issue is reconciling my PERSONAL style with my EMPLOYER'S culture. At one company for which I've worked, the unwritten rule was that we were expected to notice and respond to e-mails fairly immediately. In fact, I used to get follow-up e-mails and phone calls from people saying, "I sent that e-mail nearly 15 minutes ago and haven't heard from you..."
With my current employer, it's "understood" that everybody's too busy to constantly check our inboxes, so if you need an immediate response, you pick up the phone. This is the approach that works better for me.
Personally, I've had to teach myself to not drop everything whenever a new message arrives or to not check my inbox too often. As I was learning more about my newly-diagnosed attention deficit disorder a few years ago, I found out that it can take somebody with ADD around 45 minutes to get back into "focus" after an unexpected interruption. I've also learned that there are certain times of the day when I'm more productive performing different activities; as a result, I handle most of my heaviest inbox processing very first thing in the morning and late in the afternoon.
The unfortunate thing is that, if we were all a little more judicious when using the "urgent" flag, it would make it a lot easier to figure out exactly which messages need attention right away and which ones can wait.
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