Julie Morgenstern (dubbed the "queen of putting people's lives in order" by USA Today, is a professional organizer and productivity expert). She suggests spending the first hour of your workday email-free. Instead, find one task (even a small one) and tackle that first thing. Her argument is the first hour of the day needs to be focussed on tasks. Lifehacker is trying this. I am working up to it!
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.