A couple days ago, I wrote about implementing some techniques for reducing e-mail distractions and interruptions, based on suggestions that I had found in Tim Ferriss‘ book, The 4-hour Workweek. I’m pleased to report that — at least so far — the techniques work. Significantly, none of the people who interact with me by email seem to have noticed at all; and equally importantly, I haven’t felt any “withdrawal symptoms.” And it really does make a difference, in terms of productivity and concentration.

Probably the single most important change was turning off the audible signal (a chime, like someone tapping a knife against a glass) that previously announced the arrival of every incoming email message (which my computer checked for at one-minute intervals). And the second most important change was adjusting my email filters so that most incoming email gets re-routed to one of several different folders that basically say, “Do something about these messages, but not necessarily right away.” The only email that comes into the mail-program’s “inbox” are messages from family members; and as I indicated in my earlier posting about all of this, that’s significant because my Mac desktop displays a visible count of the number of inbox messages, but not the number of new (unread) messages in other folders.

I also subscribe to a few social-networking service, and the status updates and messages from those services previously came to my cell phone as well as my desktop computer — accompanied by beeps, whistles, and “tweets” (e.g., from a program called Twitterific, for those of you on Twitter). Twitter updates are visibly, but silently, displayed in a frame of my web browser, but it’s not at all distracting.

Since I used Apple’s .Mac email service, all of this behavior is also reflected on my iPhone. I mention this primarily because it might be a little more difficult to control one’s email traffic on a Blackberry — though turning off the vibration-based and audible message notifications is still the most important thing to do.

There’s a lot more in Ferriss’ book, some of which looks very interesting, and some of which simply doesn’t apply to my little world. I’ll offer some feedback and commentary when I get a little more time available, later in the week. Meanwhile, back to (uninterrupted) work…