Why such a hatred, not in this piece, but trending, against e-mail? It doesnt bother me much. What i did instead, i dropped my phone, figuratively speaking of course. A month ago i switched, lastly, my phone off. What a relief, no more calls, no more call when i'm busy, no more missed calls and whats more important, no questions about why you didnt answer, called back, etc. I'm free!
On my iPhone I either use silent mode without vibration (when I want events to still reach my phone but not me unless I look at it) or airplane mode (when I want to completely go off the mesh).
Don't answer them when they're interrupting or you don't feel like it (that's what I do). But, sometimes, people have genuine reasons to want to disturb you (something very important, or in emergency). That's I finally bought an iPhone instead of iPod touch and am much happier now.
> Don't answer them when they're interrupting or you don't feel like it
And then come up with excuse after excuse why you didn't answer. I got tired of it and got a phone that works... almost. It does allow me to read and send texts and to hear what the person on the other end is speaking when I pick up a call. But the microphone is broken and there is no way for me to give them an answer, which causes them to call really rarely if at all. And if they ask I can truthfully say that, well, my phone is broken, sorry... I'll call you from home or from office, or wherever, but generally later, when I feel like it.
It's still a violent interrupt - I use the silent, no vibrate, technique mentioned above, with an exception for my wife and my business partner both of whom know not to call unless they mean it. Everyone else gets used to voicemail pretty quickly I find.
