From the New York Times:
"A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer use habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day."
I'd say that, in an average day, I check my email far less frequently times and send about a quarter as many instant messages but would consider 40 websites an solid morning's work.
These numbers appear in an article about how "Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload," right down to forming "a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge."
Interestingly, most of these methods are technological, like a way to shut down your Google email for 15 minutes. I've found, in my 14 years in the knowledge economy, that the only really good methods to "fight information overload" are social ones. I make a point to simply turn away from my computer and read or write on paper while facing my window. I walk a document over to someone rather than email it. Or, hell, I get up and go to the restroom or even eat my lunch outside while reading some off-printed Chronicle of Higher Ed articles.
In short, I don't, and I'd wager than most other workers of my general species don't, really need (expensive) IT to combat IT; they need simply to reject it, if only for the duration of a lunch break or the time it takes to mark up a paper copy of a draft memo.