As part of my job as a reluctant architect, I have the privilege of teaching a “developer productivity” course, where I outline basic points that have helped me become a more efficient developer during my career.

I want to share one of those points today, one that will have a huge productivity impact with minimal effort:

Disable the email pop up notifications.

You don't even want to see the number of unread emails in your taskbar.

In fact, you don’t need to see any notifications. Disable them all.

Don’t let them break your concentration.