I think yr sample is a bit skewed. I get maybe an e-mail or two a day I actually have to read.

I get soo much email at work and its in our contracts we must respond to them within a set time , but there have been many days when i just close it down or don't even bother to look at them as im too busy.

I'm with you. Almost all my email is crap. You have a SG message. Someone posted in your myspace. Here's what soups Zoup! has today. Here's a coupon for Dave & Busters.
I really don't get anything I HAVE to read, let alone that needs replying to.

At work, my mean time between interruptions is about 5 minutes. The most invasive of which are telephone calls and people walking up to my desk.

Email is the least bother to me, because I can choose to ignore it and deal with it at a time of my choice.

My pet hate is when people send me "thank you" emails for trivial things. If I do something really spectacular, thank you mails are welcome and much appreciated, otherwise the best thank you you can give me is not to interrupt me.

Yea. For me checking my email only once every few days involves simply checking my email every few days. No special process is involved.

Obviously there's a divide between people who have an email leash and people who don't.

I'm a software developer (and responsible for having written parts of email systems, incidentally -- whoops*), but I know I'll never get any actual work done if I'm accessible all the time. I've got a fantastic reputation for never answering my phone. People just have to deal with it. It's great. I check my email when I get a roundtoit.
My boss is down the hall, and if he needs me, he can find me. But otherwise, I'm offline. No email, no chat, no phone - nothing.

In all things corresponding to correspondence, I think the general principle is this:
If you let yourself be on call 24/7, people will expect you to answer them 24/7.

(* - people always request email notifications, but then complain about them. Silly people.)

At my job, I literally receive hundreds of emails a day (plus phone calls, task force work, etc) so I know exaclt what you mean. I used to struggle with it much more than I do now. My work sent me to a FranklinCovey seminar about focusing and prioritizing your tasks in both your personal and professional life so that you can acheive the most possible things on any given day.

I know it sounds silly but by getting the most important, and often biggest things on your plate done each day before you even trun on your email, you'll get so much more done. As I hear day in, day out from my boss, it's about working SMARTER, not harder.

Ugh - I think I'm really corporate now. When did that happen?

I wish people sent me stuff through email, I hate talking on the phone and txting is retarded. People always send me shit over myspace or whatever, now that's annoying to check.

+1

I just leave my e-mail client open 24/7. It auto-checks every couple of minutes. If I get new mail, it plays a little sound and modifies its Dock icon (unless the new e-mail goes into a folder or is spam). At which point I may or may not bother seeing what it is depending on what I'm doing myself.

But then I get maybe 4 or 5 e-mails a day (not counting spam), most of which warrant little more than opening briefly. Stuff like Netflix or Gamefly letting me know they've received or shipped something, e-mail notification from various stages of online orders, and a handful of newsletters and the like.

It's true, clicking on "refresh" every minute is just...gosh, can't find the word...

Hum..anoying? no.
But it makes me angry to have such dependencies on my email.