I feel like the inability to focus for long periods of time is holding back progress in many areas. If we can't even stay away from email for a few days, how can we clear our minds of conventional thinking?
Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves productivity.
I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me.
Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.
We really new to get over this instant communication fad. It's counterproductive.
There are things that can get resolved literally 100 times faster by talking than by e-mail or text or whatever. Not everything requires that urgency, but back-and-forth in e-mail can end up being a huge time sink for both parties.
And, relevant to the topic: he is quite productive, but I don't think he would make it in academia at his current output rate. It does help that he splits his work into separate papers, though, and that he publishes 'dull' papers about his tooling, too (IIRC, the original plan was to have two volumes of TAOCP. Now, we have 4 plus fascicles plus some books about the software he wrote to lay out his books and create the fonts therein)
I've found that the best way to spend less time on e-mail is to send it very infrequently. I used to send tons of e-mail at work, and that was valuable to me at the time. Now I choose very carefully what to reply to, because every message I send means I will get something in return. It's pretty astoundingly effective.
Another strategy is to keep an odd schedule. I generally get to my desk around 2pm, so I'm sufficiently out of sync with people who get to their desk at 9 or 10am. It's also good because there so little (bike) traffic that I can space out and think on the commute.
Paul Graham wrote a nice essay where he mentioned that "prestige" is basically a way to get people to do shitty work.
What I'm saying doesn't really work for managers or leaders, because your job boils down to talking to people, and e-mail is a big part of that. But it works really well for programmers.
Somewhat related story: I work with someone who recently got a PHD. That person can concentrate and work on a hard problem even when there is conversation going on. Only when name of the person is called do they interrupt their work and start paying attention.
So, waterboarding is consistent with an environment conducive to academic research?
There are certainly issues in academia. "Publish or perish" is a terrible model for retaining people and measuring success. In the enterprise world the endless emails and meetings seriously detract from the work effort in many cases. That doesn't mean things don't get done, it means the balance is off. Be proactive and instead of making up absurd arguments about the impossible consequences of a thing, fix it. Develop tools that manage communication better. Show that in your office the daily stand ups are not necessary and ask forgiveness along with submitting the case study that demonstrates you improved productivity with your alternate approaches. Avoid making weak, sarcastic, slippery slope arguments like a religious fundamentalist that believes condoms lead to sheep fucking.
EDIT: [1] I should say, in this case, as water boarding nor anything near it in terms of affecting the mind is or is at risk of being applied in academia or enterprises where deep thought and creativity are necessary to the completion of the task.